Snowing all Day

It's been snowing all day, starting overnight, and continuing just as light snow that was supposed to amount to a cm. or two. It was lake effect snow, brought by the strong westerly winds that covered all of southern Ontario, and by dark it amounted to nearly 4 or 5 inches.

Lake effect snow flurries look very different on the radar than low pressure systems, like the last storm to go through. Low pressure systems usually show up as a long curving band of rain, moving up from the U.S., often all the way from the Gulf. They move north or northeast and gradually out to the Atlantic, either via Quebec and Labrador or further south, by the U.S. Atlantic coast, New England and the Maritimes.

Lake effect snow just comes from the Great Lakes, emerging 'on-the-spot' on the radar, and moving east, but in a continuous pattern where more snow is always emerging in the air being carried over the lakes, and blowing east. Our snow tends to come from Lake Huron, while winds over Lake Erie dump snow on Niagara Region and Buffalo, and winds over Georgian Bay dump the white stuff on the area from Collingwood to Parry Sound.

In late afternoon the clouds that had been overhead all day dispersed, and briefly we had clear blue sky, until it faded to dusk, with a huge full moon looming over the trees in the east. Until we get snow cover, evenings in late fall are very dark, but once the landscape is covered in snow, a full moon can make it very easy to see outside just because of the reflection.