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Dear Tom,
Buffalo, New York, receives much more snow than what falls in the Lake Michigan snow belt in northern Indiana. Where else does more Great Lakes lake-effect snow fall?
Bruce S., Alsip
Dear Bruce,
Lake-effect snows from Watertown to Syracuse, New York, far exceed annual snowfalls in Indiana and Michigan. Upstate New York annual snows regularly exceed 200 inches — much of it lake effect. That’s more than three times the 60-plus inches that typically blanket the area downwind of Lake Michigan. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, especially parts of the Keweenaw Peninsula, probably ranks a close second in annual snowfall. Buffalo’s annual lake snow often shuts down by mid or late winter because Lake Erie, the shallowest of the Great Lakes, usually becomes ice-covered by the third week of January.