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Vikkunen t1_j240c97 wrote

Buffalo is a little bit of a unique situation because it gets "Lake Effect" snow. It's located on the east shore of Lake Erie, which allows arctic wind to blow unobstructed. When you get a bad cold snap like we had last week, and the lake hasn't frozen, you end up with super-chilled air blowing over the surface of the much warmer lake water. The wind picks up moisture from the lake, freezes it, and then dumps it on shore.

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Phenotyx t1_j245ig5 wrote

As others have said it’s the Lake Effect for buffalo specifically.

As for the larger phenomenon, you’re likely talking about a polar vortex

Polar vortices are always there, they are just usually over the poles.

The cold polar air basically rides the jet stream, which carries it southeast.

As for the actual storms, well, this feeling of “last winter was such a mild winter! This one is so bad!”

You could definitely argue it’s at least in part due to climate change. As the earth warms, more arctic and Antarctic ice melts, changes currents and dumps more fresh water in the ocean, and most importantly evaporates more water into the atmosphere.

This is the direct cause of why more intense summer storms (hurricanes, monsoons etc) will happen, but also — counterintuitively — this is also why more powerful winter storms happen as well.

Edit: forgot to mention, warmer air means the jet stream is actually weaker, which allows the polar vortex to push further south and create that “pocket” we saw over the last two weeks, where the cold air kind of slices the US down the middle, with the east coast getting the brunt of that ultra cold arctic air. (Northwest will receive some of it but , I’ll try to find a pic, the current gets shoved pretty far east fairly quickly. Montana was in the negatives, for example, but utah was only a few degrees colder than normal)

Couldn’t find a pic but if you scroll to “Cold Wave” on thiswiki page it shows a great time lapse.

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Averrences t1_j248dix wrote

This is a great explanation, thank you !

I’m also curious, with climate change and changing of currents etc - is it more likely that the referenced storms and winter storms will be focused on North America? Or is there a chance this could similarly impact Northern Europe as well? (e.g - could the UK ever have to deal in the future with a polar vortex/ winter storm of this magnitude?)

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Phenotyx t1_j24a0f0 wrote

Yeah definitely polar vortices can span multiple continents, this 2022 one hit NA and EU.

As for the storms yeah I don’t think there’s anything limiting it to the US, the US is just a highly unique for meteorology. You have stuff like tornado alley which occurs due to cold, dry air heading southeast from the coast, down over and along the rocky mtns that meets warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the most active tornado zone in the entire world.

So like a buffalo storm is unlikely unless you live somewhere near a ton of water that hasn’t yet frozen over.

But as for the severity of the average storm; they’ll get worse around the world. EU as well.

Those EU heat waves in the summer? Theyrw kind of the reciprocal of what NA got. Could easily be the other way around or a shitty summer AND winter in one year etc.

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