The influence of multiple lake interactions upon lake-effect storms

Studies have shown that during prolonged cold air outbreaks, collective lake disturbances can originate from the organization of individual lake-scale disturbances. These collective lake disturbances may, through scale interactions, alter the behavior of the contributing individual lake-scale disturbances and the embedded lake-effect storms. Factor separation decomposition of the Great Lakes system indicates that various interactions among lake-scale processes contribute to the overall development of the regional-scale disturbance, which can modulate embedded lake-effect snowbands. Contributions from these interactions tend to offset the individual lake contributions, especially during the development of the collective lake disturbance, but vary spatially and temporally. As the regional-scale disturbance matures, lake-lake interactions then accentuate the individual lake contributions. Specifically, the modulation of lake-effect snowbands was translational, intensional, and in some instances morphological in nature. Near Lake Michigan, processes attributed to Lake Superior (upstream lake) were direct and synergistic (indirect), resulting in a time delay of maximum snowfall intensity, while processes attributed to the downstream lakes were primarily synergistic resulting in an overall decrease in snowfall intensity. (Author)