Airborne Radar Observations of Lake-Effect Snowbands over the New York Finger Lakes

Abstract

The vast majority of lake-effect snow research throughout the years has focused on the North American Great Lakes since they are often associated with strong lake-effect events that produce heavy downstream snowfall. This study investigates a lake-effect snow event that instead occurred over two smaller lakes, the New York Finger Lakes, which are just O(5) km wide and O(50) km long. A pair of well-defined snowbands that formed over Seneca and Cayuga Lakes, the two largest of the Finger Lakes, were sampled from above by a vertically pointing Doppler radar and lidar on board the University of Wyoming King Air (UWKA). With typical widths matching the widths of the lakes, and depths of less than 1000 m, the long-lake-axis-parallel bands were actually quite intense for their size. For example, updrafts of 2–3 m s−1 or greater within the band cores were common, and reflectivity occasionally exceeded 5 dBZ. Airborne dual-Doppler data show that both bands were sometimes accompanied by a well-defined thermally driven secondary circulation. Lidar data reveal that the Cayuga Lake band contained significantly more liquid water than the band over Seneca Lake, which was composed mainly of ice. Dissipating lake-effect ice clouds, carried downstream from Lake Ontario toward Seneca Lake, likely seeded the emerging convection over Seneca Lake, resulting in an accelerated depletion of liquid in the Seneca Lake band via more efficient snow growth.