Climate change causing more snow, not less.

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Climate change causing more snow, not less
Local
Climate change will be causing more snow squalls in Huron County and across Southwestern Ontario not less, says Geoff Peach, of the Lake Huron Centre for Coastal Conservation
Posted 7 days ago


The severe storms over the past few weeks that stranded motorists from Sarnia to London on the 402, shut down highways and schools across Huron and Bruce Counties and came close to shutting down London were caused by cold air traveling across warmer than usual temperatures in the water of Lake Huron, which Peach says is unlikely to freeze this year.

"This is one of the symptoms of planet change. We should expect to see snowbelts even snowier and squalls that extend further inland than usual," he says. "The only way to shut that off is an ice cover across the lake and that's not going to happen any time soon."

Peach says it's been several decades since Lake Huron has been as much as 85 per cent frozen.

"All of the Great Lakes are warmer than normal over the past number of years and for a large lake to be that much warmer is setting off some alarms," he says.

The right combination of warmer than usual lake water, gale force winds and a northeast direction that sends the cold air across the largest expanse of 180 kilometres of Lake Huron puts London in the path of severe winter weather.

"It's a recipe for streamers and we'll likely see more of them," he says.

Peach says people need to start realizing that climate change will create more dangerous driving conditions and prepare accordingly, putting snow tires on their vehicles and carrying emergency equipment such as blankets, food, candles and anything else that would help them survive if they're stranded in their cars during a blizzard.

He says climate change will also lead to warmer winters overall, with more frequent thaws happening between severe weather events. While a spring thaw used to happen in March, Peach says it's more common now to see a number of thaws in January, February and March causing a greater amount of erosion along the lakeshore.

"These pulses of water flushing off the land into the lake is going to cause more erosion, even during the period of low lake levels we're seeing now," he says, adding that more buffering will be needed by planting trees and buffer strips and protecting wetlands to reduce the erosion. Tweet