As the mercury at The Sun this morning creeps toward 50 degrees, it seems safe to talk a bit about snow. Someone has asked whether lake-effect snow - the sort that has swept off Lake Ontario this winter and buried parts of western New York State - could occur on a body of water the size of the Chesapeake Bay.

The short answer is yes. It's been studied and deemed possible. But it is, apparently very rare. Here's a clip from the Virginia Pilot on an event in 1996. Researcher Crosby Savage, at North Carolina State University, has even found a radar image of such an event in 1999. The target that day was Norfolk.

Lake-effect (or "bay-effect") snow occurs when cold winds sweep across large bodies of relatively warm, open water. Along the Great Lakes, blasts of arctic air blow across the open lakes, pick up moisture, which is then lifted higher by the higher terrain on the lee of the lakes - Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York mostly. As it rises, the air cools, and the moisture condenses, freezes and falls as snow.

The Chesapeake is smaller than the Great Lakes, of course. And the surrounding terrain - especially on the lee side in a north wind - is generally flat. But scientists have concluded the conditions are sufficient to sustain a bay-effect snow.

To read more than anyone could possibly want to read on the topic, click here.  And here.

Thanks to AccuWeather for the links.