Winter has officially arrived! Well, maybe not technically, but as far as the weather is concerned, winter has settled over the Great Lakes. Which makes this snow-lover absolutely ecstatic!

Looking outside now, you wouldn’t be able to tell that people were mowing their lawns for the last time this year on Wednesday. But the change from fall to winter in this neck of the woods can be, and often is, that abrupt.

So how do we deal with winter here in the Great Lakes? I’m glad you asked! Please be seated for your winter tutorial.

The snow we are having right now is not due to a winter storm moving through, but from the phenomenon known as lake effect snow. Having grown up with lake effect snow, from playing in it to learning how to drive in it (I have mad winter driving skillz) I was always under the assumption that everyone knew what lake effect snow is. And that more people know what snowblowers are. That actually not being the case, I took some videos of the snow, plus hubby using the snowblower and I also explain in the video what lake effect snow is.

First video…measuring the snow on the deck. How much did we get? Please excuse my pajamas.

Second video…time to get out the snowblower (as I try to explain through the scraaaape…BANG…THUD…CRAAAASH!)

Third video…waking up THE BEAST. This was a bit nerve wracking as we didn’t even use the snowblower last year, since I believe it was the warmest winter on record. So this thing hadn’t been started since February or March 2015…

I should add…lake effect snow can be very unpredictable. The bands coming off the lake can be only a few miles wide. It can literally be dumping two feet of snow on one side of town and bright and sunny on the other side. This happened in November 2014 when we got blasted with 14″ of snow in six hours and they had sunshine and green grass at my place of work. Which is why this time, we only got 9″ but two towns over (so about 10 miles away) they got 36″. All thanks to lake effect!

Last video…more observations on lake effect snow and hubby being a manly man. (He didn’t know I was taking this video…hehe.)

So there’s winter in a nutshell. This will probably continue all winter unless the lake freezes solid again like it did a few years ago. But for me, this is a great start to winter!❄️❄️❄️

?ribbonrx