You could live in the part of Indiana that borders Michigan.
Yeah, I really don't understand this at all. Could one of you smart people explain what is going on here?
I can explain the title pun, which I wish to note was appreciated by me.
I had no idea there was any place in the continental U.S. where the coldest day wasn't in January or February. I guess just every place I have lived.
People say "lake effect" all the time with regards to Michigan, and as best I can tell they mean 100 different things by it.
My understanding was that "lake effect" meant that western Michigan and northwest New York are both east of a great lake, and therefore get a lot of snowfall. Ann Arbor, on the east side, did not get shit for snow.
Vaguely imagine it's because having a great big chunk of water nearby acts as a thermal buffer. So if you have a really sunny day in the desert, that'll probably be your hottest day. But if you have a really sunny day by the sea, a lot of the heat will go into heating up the sea, so your hottest day won't be until you've had a lot more sunny days and the sea is heated up.
My best guess is that the dry air of the southwest keeps the seasonal lag to a minimum, and the humid air of the great lakes and the gulf coast makes them lag, maybe.
What pops to me is the west/east difference. I'm guessing basically the West is more strongly Continental than AMritime because distance and being surrounded by mountains. Do the Coast ranges get summer rainfall?
AIUI the snow thing is from having cold wind blow over the lakes from Canada and pick up moisture which becomes snow. Naively I'd expect that wind to to come from NE, but I'm guessing there's some counterclockwise circulation over Hudson Bay plus maybe some jet stream stuff, so maybe it comes from NW instead. In which case snow would fall on the W and N coasts of the lower peninsula, but not Ann Arbor.
The wind in the winter in the Midwest always seems to come from the north or northwest. My dad would always say "Nothing between us and the north pole but barbed wire fences" when a cold wind blew.
Technically, I guess both Canada and the Dakotas has at least a few buildings and trees.
Does the Rio Grande flood in summer?
On re-reading, hg said 15 in 6.
7 is right.
15: Northeast winds don't generally affect that far west. We get more in Western PA than in the eastern part of the state, which gets Nor'easters but fewer storms off the plains.
Interestingly, the west coast is the only place you'll find a "maritime" climate in the Koppen classification sense. So you get weather related to the ocean, but without seasonal lag. I dunno why--more circulation than in the Lakes?
The wind in the winter in the Midwest always seems to come from the north or northwest. My dad would always say "Nothing between us and the north pole but barbed wire fences" when a cold wind blew.
BUILD THE WALL!
21.2: By NE winds I meant winter monsoon. I think your Nor'easters are frontal storms in the Atlantic?
I don't think we have a monsoon here, or if we do we call it something else? There's apparently one that affects the Southwest, though.
Briefly reading on climatology and wondering if we'll soon need an East-West Water Transfer Project.
All continents have monsoons to some degree. Evidently it doesn't affect the E US much.
My basement is good for about a gallon every five minutes.
26.2: Haven't we needed one for a while?
29: More so, with climate change? Anyway, it should help keep those wily Californian separatists within the imperial orbit.
Pittsburgh really doesn't have a rainy season. Or maybe it's that we don't have a dry season.
32: In Columbus, it's definitely that we don't have a dry season.
I'm wondering about the Chinook. Lots of years, we have a deep freeze (ie, lower than 0F) in one week or another in mid February. Other years, there's a Chinook, and the temperature goes up 40 degrees in half a day. Maybe that ends up killing the average low for all of February. But that doesn't explain all those spots where there they don't have the Chinook.
As I understand it, the East Coast gets counterclockwise storms that head from SW to NE (FL to ME). If they are offshore a bit we get "nor'easters" because that will be the prevailing wind direction. If at the same time we get cold air from Canada (sometimes locally referred to as the "Montreal Express") overrunning the storm, we can get huge snow storms. If there is a blocking high pressure system over the Atlantic they can linger for days. The dynamic is similar in summer except we get lots of rain from the coastal storms and there is almost always a blocking high (the "Bermuda high") that keeps the rain around way way too long.
I think climate change has gotten things very confused and the above scenarios are rarer than they used to be. The NE ski industry has been up and down more than usual, with warmer winters than was common, but also heavier snow sometimes. We hit record and near-record highs for November (October?) this year, but also record lack of sun later on. November was the all-time least sunshine month for MA.
12 - It's like you never heard of a Mediterranean climate, which to me is amazing, because "California has a Mediterranean climate" is the second line of just about every presentation I ever see. It comes right after "Water is the lifeblood of [wherever we are]." Then I fall asleep before they can get to the fake Twain quote.
Naw. The Coast Ranges do not get summer rainfall.
I think before I understand California, I should walk across the state, from South to North.
If you walk the street North to South, the taquerias get better and better as you go.
Astonishing as it evidently is to you, California is not in fact the center of the world.
You'd have to do a few transects to get a full sampling. I would absolutely love to walk the length of California, by different routes.
38: Should have been "If walk the state North..."
Does the Rio Grande flood in summer?
I'm sure it did at one point, but it's currently dammed in about a dozen places so no.
I don't think we have a monsoon here, or if we do we call it something else? There's apparently one that affects the Southwest, though.
Yes, there's a late-summer monsoon in the Southwest that comes from the south.
Are there multiple trails that cross California? I don't want to just walk down the shoulder of a highway.
39: I try not to think about that.
The PCL is supposed to be nice, but it won't have many taquerias.
Yeah, I realized the typo a few minutes later.
Pacific Coast League. Subconsciously, a baseball fan.
Subconsciously, the last part of my handle stands for Llama, or maybe Lama.
I don't mind the shifted winter, and the long fall is nice. The lake effect snow is all fluffy and it looks like movie snow. That said, on sunny days in winter, I have to remember when I last saw the sun because it's been so long.
(No value to add re: lake effect. It does a lot of things that everyone has correctly summarized and is the explanation for all weather in Michigan, apparently.)
The lake effect also causes people in the UP to have a strange accent.
Lake effect snow off of Erie and Ontario looks like movie snow, too: three or four feet of it, sometimes.
Several late comments:
A nice illustration of the pattern of lake effect snows is visible in this map this winter's snowfall totals for the northeast--winds that produce them are generally from the NW or west and work best when they cross a relatively long reach. (Sometimes there is a significant event south of Lake Michigan in NW Indiana and more rarely a "reverse" lake effect that hits Chicago and Milwaukee. This the time of year when the lake effect is most prominent, when the lakes are relatively warm and not yet frozen. And yes that is the main driver of the Michigan's "coldest nights" being delayed. This satellite picture illustrates c clouds (not snow-laden in this instance) specifically associated with Great Lakes from earlier today. Not completely sure why there is not a comparable shift in the summer, but it is almost certainly in part due to this being based on the *low* temperatures for each day in the winter versus the high temperatures for the day in the summer; the thermal buffering of water mitigates diurnal ranges as well as annual ranges. So the effect on timing of the "lowest daily lows" in the winter are more pronounced than that of the "highest daily highs." (Seeing the "lowest daily highs" and "highest daily lows" would be illuminating with regard to that hypothesis.
As others have discussed the closer association of highs and lows with the solstices in the inland west is due tot he relative lack of moisture so the amount of insolation at the time is primarily in control (very little thermal lag). I am less sure about why the winter and summer effects are so differ going north to south. I believe some persistent winds with seasonal variation play a role (and the frequency chinooks are associated with this).
The largest shifts from solstice occurs in the highest temp timing in the thin strip right along west coast. The coastal west coast weather (particularly in California) is strongly influenced by the relative coldness of the Pacific Ocean. In particular the it leads to late spring/early summer fog/clouds in the narrow coastal zone and leads to the very late timing of warm weather.
Finally, as I mentioned here before the summer delay in central/east Texas and NE for there is a result of the circulation around the Bermuda High bringing up the "thermally-lagged" moist Gulf air increasingly through the summer. Relatedly the rapid transition on the summer map from blue through green to yellow tracks the general location of the infamous "Dry Line" where the moist Gulf air clashes with the much drier western air resulting in intense storms.
In the interests of transparency and the "self-correcting" nature of the internet, I will mention that in reading further on the recent Alaska earthquake the SW-NE trending faults near Anchorage tend to be almost all "thrust faults" (rocks sliding under other rocks rather than alongside). They increasing transition to strike-slip as you go further east (and north like the Denali fault). (And in practice faults are not strictly one or the other but instead have components of both motions (or that of normal faults--rocks sliding "on top" ).
This pedant is appreciative.
