In The News
Heavy lake-effect snow hits Great Lakes states
CONSTABLEVILLE, N.Y. — A blast of cold wind across the Great Lakes piled snow as much as 2 feet deep Monday, an early taste of winter that made driving hazardous and closed some schools across the region.
Moisture picked up from the lakes produced lake-effect snow on the eastern and southern shores of the lakes from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to this snow-prone section of New York.
The National Weather Service said 24 inches of snow had fallen at Constableville, downwind from Lake Ontario on the Tug Hill Plateau. Downwind from Lake Erie in western New York, 20 inches had piled up at South Dayton, near Buffalo.
Snow doesn't usually fall this early at Constableville, librarian Dorothy Valenti said.
"Yesterday morning we had none. So it's quite a transition to go from no snow to all this. When you open the door, it's amazing," she said in a telephone interview. "It's strange to have a snow day before Thanksgiving."
Still, the Tug Hill Plateau usually gets around 25 feet snow a year, so people are used to it.
"The roads are all plowed. The roads are fine. You can get around — once you get out of your driveway," said Valenti, who walks to work.
"I know people are having a hard time shoveling. It's a wet, heavy snow," she said.
Police reported numerous accidents on slippery roads in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York.
I
n northwest Pennsylvania, Erie reported as much as 14 inches of snow on the ground Monday morning and several schools districts in the region closed or delayed classes.
Up to a foot was forecast by Tuesday in northern Indiana, downwind from Lake Michigan, with 10 inches possible in Ohio's Cleveland area, the weather service said. Up to a foot was possible in parts of Michigan's Upper Peninsula along the shore of Lake Superior. Motorists in northern Indiana were warned that visibility along Interstate 94 and the Indiana Toll Road could drop to near zero at times.
The weather system producing the snow was moving toward the southeast, and the weather service posted a winter storm warning for Tuesday in the mountains of West Virginia and Maryland's Panhandle, saying a foot of snow is possible in places.