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Dear Tom, Does lake-effect snow occur in any other...

March 16, 2001|By Tom Skilling, chief meteorologist at WGN-TV.

Dear Tom,

Does lake-effect snow occur in any other areas besides the Great Lakes?

George Smundin, Munster Ind.

Dear George,

Although lake-effect snow is most commonly associated with the Great Lakes region, it can occur anywhere in the world where cold air flows across a substantially large body of open water.

In the United States, in addition to the Great Lakes region, lake-effect snows frequently develop downwind of the Great Salt Lake, and have occurred on a small scale off Bull Shoals Reservoir in Arkansas and Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana, when arctic air masses have penetrated the Deep South.

Worldwide, some of the most significant lake-effect snows occur in Japan and Korea off the Sea of Japan, in Scandinavia off the Gulf of Bothina and the Gulf of Finland, and in eastern Canada when cold air passes across Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.



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