In addition to many favorable benefits to the region, these substantial snowfalls can lead to significant societal impacts, such as traffic accidents, property damage, and disrupted air travel (e.g., Schmidlin, 1993 Burow and Atkinson, 2019). This instability often leads to the development of LES clouds over and downwind of the Great Lakes creating a greater possibility for precipitation and substantial amounts of snowfall (e.g., Jiusto and Kaplan, 1972). The sensible and latent heat fluxes from the surface of the lake lead to instability within the atmospheric boundary layer, typically below 1–3 km during LES situations. Cold-season lake-effect system (LES) snowfall is a phenomenon that greatly affects both the weather and climate in the vicinity of each lake and occurs when a cold airmass is modified as it passes over one or more of the Great Lakes. The LES snowfall contributions to seasonal totals were found to be generally larger for Lakes Erie and Ontario during the cold season with a greater number of LES days however, LES contributions were similar or smaller for areas in the vicinity of Lake Michigan during the cold season with a smaller number of LES days.Ī large variety of agriculture, transportation, and tourism operations are directly linked to the large freshwater lakes and the weather systems that occur within the Great Lakes region of North America. Although total LES snowfall amounts tended to be greater during the cold season with the larger number of LES days, the percent of LES snowfall contributing to the total cold-season snowfall was not directly dependent on the number of LES days. The percent contribution for LES snowfall to the seasonal snowfall varied spatially near each lake with localized maxima and ranged in magnitudes from 10% to over 70%. In general, LES snowfall exhibited a maximum contribution in near-shoreline areas surrounding each lake while non-LES snowfall tended to provide a more widespread distribution throughout the entire study regions with maxima often located in regions of elevated terrain. To enhance understanding of the regional hydroclimatology, this research examined these separate contributions with a focus on the cold seasons (October–March) of 2009/2010, a time period with the number of LES days substantially less than the mean, and 2012/2013, a time period with the number of LES days notably greater than the mean, for the regions surrounding Lakes Erie, Michigan, and Ontario. In the Great Lakes region, total cold-season snowfall consists of contributions from both lake-effect systems (LES) and non-LES snow events. 3Department of Geoscience, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, United States.2Departments of Mathematics and Geography, State University of New York Geneseo, Geneseo, NY, United States.1Department of Earth Sciences, Millersville University, Millersville, PA, United States.

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