The Buffalo-Niagara 'Blizzard Of 1977'

The cold winter here has caused Lake Erie to have almost all frozen over. Lake Erie is the only one of the Great Lakes that freezes over, because it is shallow, but it requires a cold winter. Lake Ontario never freezes over because, although it is smaller than Lake Erie in surface area, it's average depth is about four times as much. Since water has a high heat capacity, Lake Ontario retains enough heat to prevent it from ever freezing over.

For the Buffalo area, at the eastern end of Lake Erie, having the lake freeze over isn't entirely a bad thing, although it means it is cold. The prevailing wind at this latitude is from the west. Since Lake Erie is aligned mostly east-west, that means the wind sweeps the length of the lake before reaching Buffalo. 

The following image is from Google Earth.

If the air is cold, but the lake is still warm, that means the air won't be able to hold for long the water evaporated from the lake. The moisture falls on the Buffalo area as "lake effect" snow. The one good thing about the lake freezing over is that there is no more lake effect snow because water is no longer evaporating from the lake.

Lake Erie freezing over once caused a freak weather event that killed nearly 40 people. It is remembered simply as the "Blizzard of 1977". 

Lake Erie froze over early in the winter of 1976-77. There was no more lake effect snow but there were still larger scale storms. A tremendous amount of snow piled up on the frozen Lake Erie. Then, powerful winds picked up the snow and deposited it across southern Ontario and western New York State. What made it a freak storm is that it wasn't "new" snow that was falling. That's why the snowfall was so heavy, it was an accumulation of snow that had already fallen, and piled up on the frozen lake. 

Around Buffalo, occasionally it is very cold and sometimes there is heavy snow. But rarely do the two happen together. This is because the lake effect snow will cease if it is cold enough. 

That is why the Blizzard of 1977 was so deadly. It wasn't lake effect snow that was falling, but snow that had piled up on the frozen lake being carried by the wind. People got stuck in their cars while driving, because of the snow, and then froze to death, because of the cold. 

The death toll from 1977 wasn't equalled until 2022, when again there was extreme cold and heavy snow together. What I think happened here is that it was two storms together. It was early in the season and Lake Erie wasn't frozen. Lake effect snow was falling. In a larger scale storms, very cold air came in. The lake effect snow continued because the lake hadn't had the chance to freeze over. It produced the deadly, but very rare, combination of extreme cold and heavy snow. 

This very cold weather here is caused by, of all things, global warming. The Arctic region is usually surrounded by a jet stream, which tends to keep the polar air contained. Global warming has weakened the jet stream so that cold polar air can move further south, the Polar Vortex. Meanwhile, the warmer air that we would like to keep here is going up and continuing to melt the polar ice cap.