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Floridian here (I know, I know) - this is completely foreign to me. What am I looking at? Is that just a huge down burst of... snow?
Cold air from the north moves over a large body of water which is (relatively) warmer and thus takes up warmth and humidity.
It then hits the cold shore, causing air temperatures to drop again as well. Colder air can carry less humidity, so it nearly instantly forms into heavy fog and clouds.
As air can move more swiftly over water than over land, it also gets "compressed" slightly upon hitting the shore, which can lead to the just-formed clouds to thicken up enough to cause heavy snowfall.
EDIT: what you see on this photo is the superhumid air condensing into fog and clouds.
Got it, so it's not necessarily a wall of only snow - but it probably has a lot of it. That looks like it would be pretty intimidating to set out of your window. Dang nature, you crazy!
At least it's completely harmless to humans
As harmless as high humidity and stalled air in winter times can be. Mostly fog, sometimes very intense snowfall. 🤷♂️
There's snowfall within the wall?
Pretty much. Buffalo routinely gets hosed by blizzard conditions that don't usually affect the cities on the northern side of the same lake (Toronto, Mississauga, etc). It's feature of being on the south side of one of the Great Lakes.
I remember hearing about one year where Buffalo got 6 feet overnight, or some other complete bullshit.
Thanks! So is this a legit "blizzard" in the pic just rolling up on them out of nowhere?
This picture isn't a blizzard. Just a typical lake effect storm.
Looks a lot like Aphid, aka Storm Knife we got 10 or so years ago.
2017, in Erie, we got 5 feet of snow in a 24 hour period over Christmas. Not sure what buffalo got but I imagine they had quite a bit themselves, as well.
I remember a storm when we were living in Rochester, we expected 6 feet over couple/few days... Buffalo was expecting 9
(i don't recall the reports after, what we/they actually got, it was the forecast that stuck in my memory)