Yes, You Can Get Lake Effect Snows Off Lake Champlain

North winds created a band of lake effect snow off 
Lake Champlain this morning. Cold north winds picked up
moisture off the lake, and by the time those winds got
to a spot near Burlington, the snow began to fall a 
little over the lake.....

 The Great Lakes are famous for their lake effect snowstorms. Especially this time of year.

Cold air crosses the still relatively warm lakes. That warm lake water produces a lot of steam, which rises into clouds. The clouds head toward shore. 

The air once the cloud hit shore has to start rising to match the terrain. The rising air releases all that moisture in the clouds as snow. 

As we saw in Buffalo, New York last Christmas, these lake effect snow bands, when they're persistent, get quite scary. 

Smaller lakes can produce lake effect snows, too, if the wind is coming from the correct direction. Which is what was going on over Lake Champlain this morning.

The wind was coming out of the north, which is the same orientation as the long, skinny Lake Champlain. That kept the airflow over the lake long enough to produce those clouds, and eventually some lake effect snow.  A west wind wouldn't have worked. Lake Champlain is only 12 miles wide at its widest point. That's not a big enough fetch to create lake effect snows. A north wind is necessary.

You also need a pretty good sized contrast between the lake and air temperature. We had that this morning. The lake water temperature was 43 degrees and the air was close to 20 degrees. 

When the snow off Lake Champlain comes ashore, you rarely get those huge several foot deep storms. Lake Champlain lake effect is measured in just tenths of inches of snow, or sometimes a couple inches if you're lucky, 

The snow band kept getting a little stronger as you'd expect
as the clouds moved further south on the lake
and snow was falling over the lake and on the
shore. This is a view toward Shelburne. 

Radar images this morning showed lake effect snow falling from near Shelburne down into western Addison County.  

The people under the most intense - and that's being super generous - could see up to an inch of snow before the lake effect band breaks up by sometime this afternoon. 

There have been cases in which Lake Champlain lake effect snow has been impressive. 

On November 27, 1996, an oddly intense snow band of of Lake Champlain produced local snowfall rates of up to 1 or 2 inches per hour, with a total of 13 inches piling up in Cornwall, in Addison County. 

If you're going to see lake effect off Lake Champlain, it's most likely to happen in late November and December, and sometimes into January.  Later in the winter, much of the lake freezes over. The ice prevents that lake moisture from rising into the air to help produce our Champlain lake effect.