Lake Effect in the Lake Erie Snowbelt

110 to 150 inches of snow each season--that's what we get in the Northeast Ohio snowbelt, especially in Chardon, Hambden, Munson, Montville, Thompson, Chester, Leroy, and Madison Townships. We also get sometimes spectacular and other times dreary, endless cloudiness about 7 months of the year. The snow and the clouds are generated by Lake Erie, our local Wonder of the World, the 11th largest freshwater lake on earth. The snowbelt is a rather narrow band of territory east of Cleveland. It begins on Cleveland's far East Side and extends south and east to parts of Cuyahoga County, all of Lake County and Geauga County, and the northern half of Ashtabula County. It's possible to have no snow and sunny skies in Westlake, Avon Lake, or Bay Village, and blizzard-like conditions and two feet of snow on the ground 35 or 40 miles east in our snowbelt.

We snowbelters tend to take a perverse pride in our perverse weather (of course we complain about it at the same time!). I will talk about our "Lake Effect" in another posting.