The Grand Collisions That Make Snownadoes & Arctic Sea Smoke

Last December, State University of New York, Oswego, meteorologist Scott Steiger led an expedition into a snowstorm. The team called themselves OWLeS—the Ontario Winter Lake-effect Systems. Researchers lofted weather balloons and tethered blimps into snowy clouds to gather temperature and humidity data. A trio of flatbed trucks carried Doppler radar dishes, on loan from the Center for Severe Weather Research, to track the snowstorm’s speed and direction. Steiger flew right into the storm aboard a King Air 200T piloted by a former marine and equipped with high-resolution radar and sensors on the wings to detect temperature, humidity, and the size of precipitation particles. Steiger called it a dream come true. 

Originating over Lake Ontario, the storm was wreaking—whitish columns of swirling air stretched between the lake’s surface and the sky. When the storm reached land, it dropped three to four feet of snow on the Tug Hill.