My Wintry Random Walk with Students: Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

During the halcyon childhood days of 1976, a foot of snow in early November cancelled school, brightened my day, and fostered a lifetime fascination with Great Lakes snowfall and its remarkable variability. Over the last decade, I’ve had the pleasure of working with students on projects related to snowfall in the Lake Michigan region; this work includes spatiotemporal variability, the impact of regional temperature and large-scale patterns, identification of lake-effect snow (LES) events within historical data, and the sensitivity of LES events to the meteorological environment. 

This talk will highlight the most interesting things we’ve learned, as well as fundamental aspects of snowfall climatology in good ol’ Valpo and the broader Lake Michigan basin.