{"id":12497,"date":"2020-02-06T16:53:44","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T16:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/?p=12497"},"modified":"2020-02-06T19:28:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T19:28:23","slug":"superior-snowfall-study-compares-lake-effect-snow-to-large-snowstorms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/articles\/12497","title":{"rendered":"Superior snowfall: Study compares lake-effect snow to large snowstorms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Located along the south shore of Lake Superior, Marquette,\nMichigan receives 8 to 16 feet of snow per year, making it a magnet for snow\nenthusiasts of all types, including researchers who study snow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it turns out, two types of storms are responsible for snowfall in Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula and the Great Lakes region generally. The first takes the form of intense, localized lake-effect snowstorms that can dump several inches to several feet of snow at a time. The second, are large-scale (or synoptic) snowstorms that result from wider ranging weather systems moving across the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
An image of lake-effect snow captured by the MODIS weather satellite in 2015. Credit: CIMSS<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison\nSpace Science and Engineering Center have been studying snowfall near Marquette,\nMichigan since 2014 to tease out the differences between these two storm types.\nTheir study analyzes four years of winter data to investigate snowfall rates\nand the physical characteristics of snowstorms over the area. The results\nof their work<\/a> were published January 2020 in the Journal\nof Applied Meteorology and Climatology<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe big takeaway from this study is that we identified major\ndifferences in the microphysics and the meteorology of these two kinds of\nsnowstorms,\u201d says SSEC scientist Claire Pettersen, lead author of this work. \u201cUltimately\nthese data can be used to improve satellite retrievals and help forecasters\nunderstand differences in environmental factors that produce these snowstorms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team\u2019s analysis shows that lake-effect snow events occur\ntwice as often as large-scale snowstorms, but each accounted for nearly equal\namounts of the annual accumulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Lakes, due to the sheer volume of water they hold,\nare capable of generating weather. Lake-effect snow occurs when cold air rushes\nover a warm body of water (like an unfrozen Lake Superior) and rapidly rises.\nThe rising air cools and condenses into clouds which grow narrow and dense, eventually\ndropping precipitation over land. Large-scale snowstorms, on the other hand,\nare produced by the cold and warm fronts and low-pressure systems that drive\neveryday weather across the continent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related to overall storm structure, lake-effect storms tend to be fairly shallow, meaning they do not extend far into the atmosphere, with precipitation levelling off around 1.5 km above the ground. In contrast, large-scale snowstorms can extend upwards with precipitation detected to beyond 3 to 5 km in the atmosphere on average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Results from the Jan. 2020 paper show the average elevation of measured precipitation in the two different storm systems. Lake-effect systems (right) are between 1.5km – 2km, whereas the larger synoptic storms (left) extend beyond 3km.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pettersen and her colleagues took measurements using a suite of instruments located at the National Weather Service station in Marquette, Michigan. Their data are available online<\/a> daily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Relatively little observational data exists for Lake\nSuperior and its weather patterns. Other Great Lakes like Ontario and Erie have\na longer history of scientific observation. Pettersen says these long-term\nstudies are important in order to find statistically significant differences\nbetween the weather systems and to eventually investigate trends in snowfall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
SSEC scientist Claire Pettersen. Credit: Bill Bellon<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The team collected atmospheric information like temperature,\nhumidity and pressure, as well as snowfall rates and snowflake size. A small\nradar, known as the Micro Rain Radar, was used to profile the storms as they\npassed overhead to estimate the height of the precipitation. Whereas a\nhigh-speed camera rig, built and provided by NASA, collected detailed images of\nsnowflake sizes and was used to determine accumulation rates.  Additionally, the National Weather Service\noffice provided NEXRAD radar data, meteorological observations and measurements\nof snow accumulations for comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pettersen says that differences in snowflake size and shape\nrevealed notable differences between each type of storm. Shallow, lake-effect\nstorms tended to produce more large snow crystals with greater variations in\nsize. However, the more homogenous synoptic storms produced fewer large ice\ncrystals with less variation in size. Due to these observed differences,\nresearchers think that lake-effect snow events are more variable in terms of\nthe snow density and snow particles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHaving these long-term data sets will help us understand the characteristics of snowfall associated with distinct weather patterns over the Great Lakes and eventually could be used for climatological and trend analysis,\u201d says Pettersen. She and her team have already begun their seventh year of data collection at the Marquette site. \u201cUsing simple tactics, we can take something fundamental that yields good information and learn how there are differences in these storm systems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This research was supported by NASA and NOAA<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Located along the south shore of Lake Superior, Marquette, Michigan receives 8 to 16 feet of snow per year, making it a magnet for snow enthusiasts of all types, including researchers who study snow. As it turns out, two types of storms are responsible for snowfall in Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula and the Great Lakes region […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":12498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-12497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-stories","tag-cimss"],"acf":{"include_for_media_link":"no","guest_author":[{"first_name":"","last_name":"","link":""}],"sub_title":"Study compares lake-effect snow to large snowstorms","ssec_home_page_carousel_image":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2020\/02\/Lake_effect_web_banner.jpg","short_title":"Superior snowfall"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12497"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12521,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12497\/revisions\/12521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}