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I would be curious to hear what "moderates temperatures a lot" means to you. I have family two blocks off Lake Erie in Michigan; just about the same geography as Milwaukee. It has no impact on winter temps. January in Michigan is January in Michigan.
You could pour Lake Erie into Lake Michigan 10 times over and it still wouldn't fill it! Erie never goes below 200 feet, and Michigan gets close to 1,000 feet. For perspective, Erie is only 3 times bigger than Lake Tahoe and Lake Michigan is one of the biggest freshwater seas on the planet. Throw in the fact that the above is for just Lake Michigan, and Lake Michigan/Lake Huron are generally considered the same lake, and there just isn't ANY comparison here.
Real life: I live blocks from Lake Michigan in Milwaukee and work 15 miles inland. There are days during summer where I leave 85 degrees and sunny and drive into 72 and foggy; there are days it's raining and 40 at home and a blizzard by the time I get to work. It's a massive effect, often 15 degrees or more difference, and it's clear that you don't know anything about it. Have you never heard of Lake Effect Snow? Remember this year when Buffalo got 6 feet of snow in one storm and a few miles away there wasn't any snow? That's Lake Effect, and it happens all around Lake Michigan though the effect goes inland further on the east side due to prevailing winds.
You could pour Lake Erie into Lake Michigan 10 times over and it still wouldn't fill it! Erie never goes below 200 feet, and Michigan gets close to 1,000 feet. For perspective, Erie is only 3 times bigger than Lake Tahoe and Lake Michigan is one of the biggest freshwater seas on the planet. Throw in the fact that the above is for just Lake Michigan, and Lake Michigan/Lake Huron are generally considered the same lake, and there just isn't ANY comparison here.
Real life: I live blocks from Lake Michigan in Milwaukee and work 15 miles inland. There are days during summer where I leave 85 degrees and sunny and drive into 72 and foggy; there are days it's raining and 40 at home and a blizzard by the time I get to work. It's a massive effect, often 15 degrees or more difference, and it's clear that you don't know anything about it. Have you never heard of Lake Effect Snow? Remember this year when Buffalo got 6 feet of snow in one storm and a few miles away there wasn't any snow? That's Lake Effect, and it happens all around Lake Michigan though the effect goes inland further on the east side due to prevailing winds.
A few points:
1) Lake Erie's maximum depth is 210 feet. Source
2) Lake Huron, or whatever you want to call the body of water northeast of Saginaw, has nothing to do with Milwaukee's weather. It is hundreds of miles away and the state of Michigan is in between.
3) 40 and raining in Bay View and "blizzard" at your workplace is not automatically attributable to Lake Michigan. The are times I leave my house on the near east side of Indianapolis and have no snow, and I get to work in Fishers, and there is 5 inches of snow on the ground. Indianapolis is as close to a great lake as MKE is to Lake Huron.
4) Lake Effect snow is not as common in Milwaukee as it is in Buffalo. Find any reputable source that says MKE has common and significant lake effect snow. Guy blogging about things his grandma told him over the years doesn't count. Nor does weather guy blogging about that one time it lake effect snowed. Though, he does say this about lake effect snow in Milwaukee, Typically, there aren't a lot of days in the winter when winds are coming out of the east.
5) The lack of snow in north Buffalo during November's lake effect snow event was not caused by the lakes warming Buffalo up (remember, your comment that I responded too was about temperature moderation, now you are citing things that have nothing to do with temp moderation). North Buffalo was not in the moisture line that came over the lake. That is why it snowed less there and the south counties were hammered. Not because north Buffalo had its temperatures moderated. In fact; I bet it was pretty cold all over the Buffalo area that week.
Yeah, Chicago people are here all the time, from restaurants to festivals to sporting events (Bucks, Brewers). And vice versa, obviously.
It takes almost an hour less to drive from Chicago to Milwaukee vs NYC to Philly.
An hour or less? It's 92 miles, and a lot of traffic in between those two cities. You can never make it in an hour. I'm about 40 miles from downtown in the northern suburbs, I'm lucky if I get under an hour to downtown. Of course 92 miles is still exceedingly close.
You could pour Lake Erie into Lake Michigan 10 times over and it still wouldn't fill it! Erie never goes below 200 feet, and Michigan gets close to 1,000 feet. For perspective, Erie is only 3 times bigger than Lake Tahoe and Lake Michigan is one of the biggest freshwater seas on the planet. Throw in the fact that the above is for just Lake Michigan, and Lake Michigan/Lake Huron are generally considered the same lake, and there just isn't ANY comparison here.
Real life: I live blocks from Lake Michigan in Milwaukee and work 15 miles inland. There are days during summer where I leave 85 degrees and sunny and drive into 72 and foggy; there are days it's raining and 40 at home and a blizzard by the time I get to work. It's a massive effect, often 15 degrees or more difference, and it's clear that you don't know anything about it. Have you never heard of Lake Effect Snow? Remember this year when Buffalo got 6 feet of snow in one storm and a few miles away there wasn't any snow? That's Lake Effect, and it happens all around Lake Michigan though the effect goes inland further on the east side due to prevailing winds.
I know what you're getting at, but I think you're a little off here. Since 90% of snowstorms move from the west to the east having a lake east of a city is going to have very minimal effect on "Lake Effect" snow. Now for the people living in Michigan, northern Indiana, northern Ohio, and especially western New York, Lake Effect snow is a big deal. Not only does it add an almost impenetrable cloud layer throughout much of the winter, but these areas receive 2 to 4 times as much snow as places west of the Great Lakes.
I lived most of my life in Northern Indiana, where they average around 80 inches of snow per year, here in the Chicagoland area we don't even average 40 inches, it's because we are west of the lake. I have not heard, though I'm not denying, that being near a large body of water helps warm the nearby temperatures, I can't back this up or refute it, but I do know that areas generally affected by Lake Effect snow are generally a few degrees warmer due to the thicker cloud layer that the Lake Effect snow causes. It gets colder in the Chicagoland area than northern Indiana. So Indianapolis, in central Indiana will have noticeably milder winters than will Milwaukee, however both probably receive similar amounts of annual snowfall.
An hour or less? It's 92 miles, and a lot of traffic in between those two cities. You can never make it in an hour. I'm about 40 miles from downtown in the northern suburbs, I'm lucky if I get under an hour to downtown. Of course 92 miles is still exceedingly close.
cheese plate is saying that the driving time is 1 hour less than the driving time between NYC and Philly.
Regardless of what anyone's saying above, I've lived right off Lake Michigan's west side from Door County down to Milwaukee, and we very commonly get lake effect snow. I don't care if someone thinks Lake Erie is comparable to the more-than-ten-times-bigger Lake Michigan, and I don't care if someone doesn't understand the difference between living in the Chicago suburbs on the base of the Lake and living along the western shore in sight of the Lake. I'm TELLING you right now that the temperatures are often vastly different from my house to where I work 15 miles inland. It is not uncommon certain times of the year for there to be a 15 degree difference. Throughout my entire life, I've watched blizzards out the window while the radar shows no clouds. There are bands in Wisconsin named "Lake Effect." People in Wisconsin who live along Superior and Michigan know that this is a fact.
During the Buffalo storm, Giles WI was getting about the same amount that week. Neighboring cities get far less than Giles, due to lake effect and the hills: Small Wis. town buried under 73 inches of snow
As for the drive to Chicago, I can get there in about 70 minutes from my house in Milwaukee, and it takes about an hour longer to go from NYC to Philly. This is why so many people go to events in the other city here vs there.
You can find similar reports and accounts all over the internet. Abstract:
Prevailing onshore winds off Lake Michigan in the warm season (April-October) cause cooling along the adjacent coast during the day. Mesoscale lake breeze formation occurs most frequently in August. Synoptic-aided lake breezes, which combine mesoscale inputs with existing large-scale conditions, are most prevalent in May. Lake breezes are favored by high pressure and airmass weather patterns. Synoptic lake effect dominates in April; large-scale onshore flow is often produced by high pressure, post-cold front, and pre-warm front weather conditions. Overall, lake cooling is experienced 60% of the time during the warmer months. The highest frequency of lake effect is found in May. The cooling impact of Lake Michigan across the Milwaukee area is maximized since spring is the season of greatest contrast in land and lake temperatures. Lake-effect conditions in the cool season (November-March) occur less frequently. Onshore flow off the warmer lake reduces cooling at night along the Milwaukee shoreline. Synoptic lake effect is dominant, with a peak in March. Lake snow and mesoscale land breeze developments are most frequent in midwinter, when large land-lake thermal contrasts exist during outbreaks of cold polar air under high pressure patterns.
You can find similar reports and accounts all over the internet. Abstract:
Prevailing onshore winds off Lake Michigan in the warm season (April-October) cause cooling along the adjacent coast during the day. Mesoscale lake breeze formation occurs most frequently in August. Synoptic-aided lake breezes, which combine mesoscale inputs with existing large-scale conditions, are most prevalent in May. Lake breezes are favored by high pressure and airmass weather patterns. Synoptic lake effect dominates in April; large-scale onshore flow is often produced by high pressure, post-cold front, and pre-warm front weather conditions. Overall, lake cooling is experienced 60% of the time during the warmer months. The highest frequency of lake effect is found in May. The cooling impact of Lake Michigan across the Milwaukee area is maximized since spring is the season of greatest contrast in land and lake temperatures. Lake-effect conditions in the cool season (November-March) occur less frequently. Onshore flow off the warmer lake reduces cooling at night along the Milwaukee shoreline. Synoptic lake effect is dominant, with a peak in March. Lake snow and mesoscale land breeze developments are most frequent in midwinter, when large land-lake thermal contrasts exist during outbreaks of cold polar air under high pressure patterns.
None of this really has anything to do with your original claim; or really changes the discussion. No one is saying Lake Michigan has zero impact on Milwaukee's weather. All I said was that you were overstating the impact in winter, and this linked article and subsequent claims seems to back that up.
After reading all of this, I still don't plan on trading Indy's weather for Milwaukee's.
Anyway, back on topic. Milwaukee is still rad.
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