300
The wall of lake effect snow in Buffalo yesterday.
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
300 points (99.0% liked)
Mildly Interesting
17356 readers
19 users here now
This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Floridian here (I know, I know) - this is completely foreign to me. What am I looking at? Is that just a huge down burst of... snow?
Cold air from the north moves over a large body of water which is (relatively) warmer and thus takes up warmth and humidity.
It then hits the cold shore, causing air temperatures to drop again as well. Colder air can carry less humidity, so it nearly instantly forms into heavy fog and clouds.
As air can move more swiftly over water than over land, it also gets "compressed" slightly upon hitting the shore, which can lead to the just-formed clouds to thicken up enough to cause heavy snowfall.
EDIT: what you see on this photo is the superhumid air condensing into fog and clouds.
Got it, so it's not necessarily a wall of only snow - but it probably has a lot of it. That looks like it would be pretty intimidating to set out of your window. Dang nature, you crazy!
At least it's completely harmless to humans