Is horrible winter weather ironically good for northern cities?

[Private Dick]

Originally Posted by flar

The snow melts in those places. The amount of snow Ottawa gets can vary quite a bit from year to year, but the difference is that it stays all winter because it's a lot colder. It's hardly snowed at all this year, but there's two feet in my yard right now, and it's been there since January.

Well... kind of. Melts a bit, but then whatever melts is replaced very quickly with a fresh dumping.

The cities I listed pretty much have had snow covering the ground all season. I know for a fact that Erie has... having been there many times this winter. I even shoveled over 15 tons of snow off of a roof the last week of Feb... it was 28" deep. The roof had been completely covered with snow since the first week of Jan.

I understand that whatever snow Ottawa gets usually stays for a while because of the low temps, but it would be really untrue to give the impression that "yeah, it snows a lot in those cities I mentioned, but it also melts". They don't call that region of the continent the Snow Belt for nothing. It might warm up into the 40s and melt some, but it rarely gets warm enough to melt all of it. January and February are pretty much white in those places.

All of the cities I mentioned (save Cleveland) have had over 100" of snow this winter. Ottawa has had what, probably 65"? That's about a 3 foot difference. That's a lot of snow... and an amount that definitely does not melt easily at all. It's not like the areas I'm talking about are tropical in comparison. It's really cold in Snow Belt too.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Mister F

^The exception would be in forests where not a lot of sunlight hits the ground. The snow can stay on the ground a lot longer there than you'd think.

I know, I'm a cross-country skier. Some sections of Gatineau can have a bit of snow lasting into early May and I've even see north-facing rock cuts having a bit of ice on them into June there.

But the park isn't really skiable in April most years.

[flar]

Originally Posted by Mister F

^The exception would be in forests where not a lot of sunlight hits the ground. The snow can stay on the ground a lot longer there than you'd think.



I'll give it a shot

Average overall temperature for Toronto this past February: -12.6C (9F). -2.6 (27F) is normal.
Same stat for Cleveland: -16C
And for Ottawa: -16.2C (-8.1 is normal)

Not that it really matters, but the lower Great Lakes have been getting significantly colder weather than a normal Ottawa winter. It's been record breaking.
link link link

My point is, historically it rarely drops below -20C in the lower Great Lakes, even in cold snaps, but it often does in Ottawa. So the lower Great Lakes area is getting a taste of what we get here every winter season.

What those averages are showing is the very sustained nature of the recent cold spell. There weren't any days above freezing (or even close to freezing) to offset the cold, it just kept going and going and going. And yes, for southern Ontario, it was record breaking in terms of both the absolute lows and for duration. Ottawa has also had the long duration of coldness, but nowhere not record breaking lows. Just a lot more days of sub -20C.

[flar]

Originally Posted by Private Dick

Well... kind of. Melts a bit, but then whatever melts is replaced very quickly with a fresh dumping.

The cities I listed pretty much have had snow covering the ground all season. I know for a fact that Erie has... having been there many times this winter. I even shoveled over 15 tons of snow off of a roof the last week of Feb... it was 28" deep. The roof had been completely covered with snow since the first week of Jan.

I understand that whatever snow Ottawa gets usually stays for a while because of the low temps, but it would be really untrue to give the impression that "yeah, it snows a lot in those cities I mentioned, but it also melts". They don't call that region of the continent the Snow Belt for nothing. It might warm up into the 40s and melt some, but it rarely gets warm enough to melt all of it. January and February are pretty much white in those places.

All of the cities I mentioned (save Cleveland) have had over 100" of snow this winter. Ottawa has had what, probably 65"? That's about a 3 foot difference. That's a lot of snow... and an amount that definitely does not melt easily at all. It's not like the areas I'm talking about are tropical in comparison. It's really cold in Snow Belt too.

I lived in a snowbelt city, London, ON. These spots around the Great Lakes are interesting because you can go from three feet of snow to none in within a thirty minute drive.

Anyway, there is a qualitative difference between the snowpack you get in more northerly areas and what they get in snow belt cities with more freeze/thaw cycles. I found it quite fascinating when I moved up here. There are different layers in the snow, and even certain animals that live in some of the lower layers during the winter for protection.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I know, I'm a cross-country skier. Some sections of Gatineau can have a bit of snow lasting into early May and I've even see north-facing rock cuts having a bit of ice on them into June there.

But the park isn't really skiable in April most years.

When I said Gatineau, I meant Gatineau Park, not the city or suburbs.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by flar

These spots around the Great Lakes are interesting because you can go from three feet of snow to none in within a thirty minute drive.

snowfall totals in the great lakes region are PROFOUNDLY affected by how close to the lakeshore you are and which side of a given great lake you are on.

some average annual snowfall examples:

western shore of lake michigan - Milwaukee: 46.9"
eastern shore of lake michigan - Muskegon, MI: 93.7"


northern shore of lake ontario - Toronto: 47.8"
southern shore of lake ontario - Rochester: 99.5"


due to the relationship of prevailing winds with lake effect snow, the snowy shore of a great lake typically sees roughly twice as much snowfall as the opposite shore. it's a significant difference.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by flar

Ottawa has also had the long duration of coldness, but nowhere not record breaking lows. Just a lot more days of sub -20C.

Ottawa has broken records for cold this year.

As the stats show, the lower Great Lakes have had a cold winter even by Ottawa standards.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Mister F

Ottawa has broken records for cold this year.

As the stats show, the lower Great Lakes have had a cold winter even by Ottawa standards.

Indeed it has.

Many daily records were broken for lowest lows, lowest highs, also monthly records for coldest month (for February I think), consecutive days dropping below temperature X, etc.

Though Ottawa didn't break its all-time record low. But I think few places in Ontario or Quebec did this winter anyway.

[Private Dick]

Originally Posted by flar

I lived in a snowbelt city, London, ON. These spots around the Great Lakes are interesting because you can go from three feet of snow to none in within a thirty minute drive.

Anyway, there is a qualitative difference between the snowpack you get in more northerly areas and what they get in snow belt cities with more freeze/thaw cycles. I found it quite fascinating when I moved up here. There are different layers in the snow, and even certain animals that live in some of the lower layers during the winter for protection.

London Ont. is not really a prime snowbelt city though. Snowbelt cities seem to lie a bit closer to the shore to the south/west of the Lakes. While London does get a lot of snow and is subject to lake effect snowfall, I imagine that it's still not quite the same as cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Erie, Syracuse, in terms of snowfall amounts.

I think this is probably the most accurate general map of where the greatest snowfall areas around the Great Lakes are:


If You drive 30 minutes south of these cities, there is quite often more snow due to elevation increases. Some places in NW PA and SW NY in the mountains can have significant snow until June. You can see wide disparities in snow depth throughout the region, but that's primarily early in the season, when lake effect storms are isolated. Once January rolls around though, the whole area is covered with significant snowfall.

I do get what you are saying now though and I do understand that there is a difference... as you move further north into Canada, winter is going to have a more lasting grip, no doubt... much more immune from the mediating effects of warm southern fronts moving up.

[Evergrey]

Originally Posted by photolith

moving to florida would be more hellish than the 4 months of really cold weather here. I'm so sick of all the older people saying, i cant wait to move to florida, its paradise down there and youre so close to walt disney world yay!!!! Yeah ok, move there and be stuck inside your hellish suburban landscape and inside for 7 months as its too hot to even attempt to do anything outside. Florida is a suburban wasteland.

qft

[brickell]

It's never too hot for a round of shuffleboard and the early bird at the club.

[Xing]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

snowfall totals in the great lakes region are PROFOUNDLY affected by how close to the lakeshore you are and which side of a given great lake you are on.

Thank you for pointing out, "which side you are on." So many people think Chicago gets a lot of snow because of the lake. While it gets some lake effect, the snow has to be coming from the north, or east , and this doesn't always happen. If the storm is circling like a hurricane , the north easternpart of the storm may cycle back toward Chicago counter clockwise, which may intensify, but I'm not sure if that happens often either. Most storms appear to just go east straight into Chicago, handing off most of the lake effect over to Michigan, and some parts of Indiana.

These moments may contribute to snowfall totals, but I feel most of Chicago's snow simply comes from Iowa/Missouri.

[Buckeye Native 001]

Hell, there's usually a huge difference in how much snow the east side of Cleveland gets versus the west side relative to their positions along Lake Erie.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Xing

So many people think Chicago gets a lot of snow because of the lake.

for whatever reason, the severity of chicago's winter weather is much stronger in the minds of people who don't live here than it is in reality. i mean, i've seen seemingly intelligent people on this very forum claim, with a straight face, that chicago has a tundra-like winter climate. yes, chicago can get bitterly cold in the winter. and yes, sometimes it snows in chicago too, but tundra-like? no, not even close. if you can handle a northeast winter, a chicago winter is not another order of magnitude more severe or anything like that. the biggest difference is that the cold snaps out here have deeper bottoms because we don't have an adjacent ocean for moderating air temps, but even then cold snaps typically only last 2 or 3 days (this winter from hell notwithstanding), it's not like it's 5 degrees below zero from thanksgiving to st. paddy's day (FAR from it!).

chicago gets lots of snow compared to, say, atlanta, but in the great lakes region chicago is the least snowy city directly on a great lake that i can find, with an annual average snowfall of only 36.3".

to put that into perspective:

boston: 43.8"
hartford: 40.5"
providence: 33.8"
newark: 29.5"
NYC: 25.8"
philly: 22.4"


so, while some areas on the great lakes get positively walloped with lake effect snow in the winter, chicago is not one of those places. chicago's average snowfall total is in the same ballpark as many cities in the northeast.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Dr Nevergold

I'm unsure how many years you've been in Ottawa, but you need to take into account the most recent two winters (this year and the last season from 2013-2014) have been exceptionally cool winters for most of North America overall. However, the previous two winters in 2012-13 and 2011-2012 were fairly warm. In fact, 2012 was the year with the exceptional heat wave after a very warm start to the year (much of the mid-US was stuck in 110+ temperatures in late June and July). If you have only witnessed two Ottawa winters, it may be that you've seen the worst of the worst these past two years.

In regards to how weather affects urban development and transit usage patterns, I don't think the weather affects it so much as cultural and other issues. Within US boundaries, I largely see an east-west density divide. For example, suburban Philadelphia is every bit as bucolic and low density as Atlanta for the most part; however, Philadelphia is such an old city that was significantly large much earlier in history that its got a massive regional rail network that connects that old city to these old bucolic suburbs where lot sizes can be huge and density is very low. Same with Boston, an urban old core, but its suburbs are so low density it doesn't even match density levels in suburbs surrounding places like Dallas or Memphis.

The story is mirrored in the south. The 'new growth' cities of Raleigh, Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville are all four cities with quite bucolic, ultra low density housing for the most part, with significantly smaller urban cores than their northeastern counterparts due to the difference in the age that they grew up in. Yet even in the south, you see vastly more dense metropolitan areas (even if still single family home/auto oriented) the more westward you go. Florida is a bit different, but that's geographical. When you have marshland and water surrounding every corner, its hard to develop the bucolic Atlanta or Philly sprawl.

New Orleans is geographically locked as well, plus it was the most urban city in the southeast for over half of the country's entire history. Its old urban core is much like Philly in this regard: it makes it a more urban city.

In the north, suburbs in and around Minneapolis and Detroit have smaller lot sizes and more density than Philadelphia or Baltimore (speaking extremely suburban here, not comparing central cores at all).

Cities like Dallas and Memphis have suburbs that look more like Los Angeles or Denver than the large lot sizes of the suburban northeast. Yes, Philly is a larger more dense core than Memphis by far, but the suburbs in Memphis are more dense (suburban dense that is) than most Philly lot sizes for single family homes and they're usually more tightly packed together.

This east-west difference doesn't account for weather differences. Memphis and Dallas are certainly much warmer then Philly or Boston. In the actual west you have relatively small lot sizes from Portland to San Diego or Salt Lake to Phoenix. Its suburban, but a higher density form of suburbia like Memphis is in the southeast. Go figure. This topic could be discussed at length for weeks and there'd still be more questions than answers.

I'm sure you know this, but it bears repeating for those who don't: the outer suburbs of historic colonial cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. were for centuries farms and relatively isolated, independent villages and towns that were only swallowed up by their respective metropolitan economies very late in the game. Thus they don't have the built environment of modern suburbia, purpose-built explicitly to be part of a larger metropolitan system, like we see in newer areas like Dallas, Memphis and San Diego.

For example, the place where my family first lived was first settled in 1651, and wasn't really a "suburb" of Boston until around 1964, when the first subdivisions were built. I don't know if the laws have changed in recent years, and there have definitely been variances granted, but the town has required one acre per 'settlement' for most of its history, which means it was parceled out and built out in a way that is not amenable to Dallas-style suburbia, and keeps densities very low. It would be silly to compare a place that existed for 313 years as an independent town before becoming a functional suburb with a place that was purpose-built yesterday to offer suburban homes near a freeway entrance without noting the fundamental differences between them.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by fflint

I'm sure you know this, but it bears repeating for those who don't: the outer suburbs of historic colonial cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. were for centuries farms and relatively isolated, independent villages and towns that were only swallowed up by their respective metropolitan economies very late in the game. Thus they don't have the built environment of modern suburbia, purpose-built explicitly to be part of a larger metropolitan system, like we see in newer areas like Dallas, Memphis and San Diego.

For example, the place where my family first lived was first settled in 1651, and wasn't really a "suburb" of Boston until around 1964, when the first subdivisions were built. I don't know if the laws have changed in recent years, and there have definitely been variances granted, but the town has required one acre per 'settlement' for most of its history, which means it was parceled out and built out in a way that is not amenable to Dallas-style suburbia, and keeps densities very low. It would be silly to compare a place that existed for 313 years as an independent town before becoming a functional suburb with a place that was purpose-built yesterday to offer suburban homes near a freeway entrance without noting the fundamental differences between them.

Hmm good point. Never thought of it that way.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Austinlee

Hmm good point. Never thought of it that way.

Essentially all of Eastern and Central Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Southeast New Hampshire (i.e. the Boston CSA) was parceled out this way by no later than 1730. If you use Google Earth, zoom around the Boston burbs (especially along the Merrimack River, and the South Coast: East Providence to Cape Cod), and then look at the Dallas burbs. Massive difference in land usage, lot sizes, road patterns, etc.

[MayDay]

the outer suburbs of historic colonial cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. were for centuries farms and relatively isolated, independent villages and towns that were only swallowed up by their respective metropolitan economies very late in the game. Thus they don't have the built environment of modern suburbia, purpose-built explicitly to be part of a larger metropolitan system, like we see in newer areas like Dallas, Memphis and San Diego.

That holds true with Cleveland's ex-urban areas, especially on the east side such as Geauga County. It makes sense as Greater Cleveland used to be part of Connecticut's Western Reserve.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

snowfall totals in the great lakes region are PROFOUNDLY affected by how close to the lakeshore you are and which side of a given great lake you are on.

some average annual snowfall examples:

western shore of lake michigan - Milwaukee: 46.9"
eastern shore of lake michigan - Muskegon, MI: 93.7"


northern shore of lake ontario - Toronto: 47.8"
southern shore of lake ontario - Rochester: 99.5"


due to the relationship of prevailing winds with lake effect snow, the snowy shore of a great lake typically sees roughly twice as much snowfall as the opposite shore. it's a significant difference.

Lake Effect snow is totally crazy. Not only does it effect certain regions significantly more than others, but it is wildly unpredictable and, while we can predict when the conditions are right, we have no idea exactly where a band of it is going to set up. As someone else mentioned, you could get 3 feet of snow in one location and none 5 or 10 miles away. Just look at this crazy map of the aftermath of the blizzard that hit Chicago and was intensified by Lake Effect earlier this year:

weather.gov

You can see the lake effect bands still forming over the lake from the bitter cold that followed the storm, but more interestingly, you can see a massive streak of moderate to heavy snow that jets all the way down into Kentucky, 100's of miles away. That entire streak was caused by a super intense band of snow that was gathering steam (literally) along the entire N-S length of Lake Michigan in the midst of an already powerful winter storm.

[Reverberation]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

it's all relative. one man's pleasant is another man's intolerable.

i don't find a NORMAL chicago winter to be unpleasant save for maybe a handful of days during a cold snap or two. however, someone from miami would likely find chicago's weather to be intolerable from october through may.

I was just up there and the dryness of the cold weather helps out in a big way. 20-25 degrees in Chicago feels like a humid 40 degrees in Houston.

That being said, and having visited Chicago in the summer and winter, whatever convenience the trains make up for in avoiding icy roads can be offset by walking through the minefield of frozen dog sh*t, salt, ash, cigarette butts, loogies, and garbage that get buried in the snow on and along the sidewalks. I guess if you live there long enough you get special boots for it and leave them outside your door at night. Given the choice, I would still rather risk the disgusting sidewalks over icy roads. It comes down to a few minutes of gross stuff then furious hand washing vs. high stakes bobsledding with cars.