Lake Effect

We've had it described to us by numerous people on numerous occasions since we first expressed interest in moving to the Lake Erie area. Moisture from the lake is absorbed into the atmosphere above, turned into snow, and dumped on the surrounding countryside. Meadville, they told us, is pretty much at the far side if the lake effect belt. Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don't. The day before yesterday we witnessed this phenomenon first hand.

The Reverend Carmen was covering for the Youngstown, Ohio minister while he was on vacation, and it happened that a Youngstown member needed a memorial service performed during that time. So Saturday, with dense snow falling all around us, we set out on snowy roads for Youngstown. Rev. Carmen kept asking if we were crazy to be doing this in such obviously awful weather, but onward we trekked.

About thirty miles south on Interstate 79, we suddenly ran out of the snow. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the roads were dry. We got to Youngstown on the most beautiful day we'd seen in weeks.

She did the service, we ate an early supper, and then lit out back to Meadville. Right around the same part of I-79, we slammed back into snow, worse than the morning's offering, blinding almost white-out snow, and it was impossible to see the lines on the road. To make matters worse, it was getting dark. We'd been making a shopping list on the way, but it was abandoned with our effort to stay on the highway. At last we came to the Meadville exit, but alas, no-one had exited there in a while. There were no tracks to follow, nothing but a guard rail to indicate where the exit might be.

We reached 322 safely and steered for home. There would be no stops along the way. We got here and she tried to back in - to no avail. She trudged through deep snow, leaving the car at the end of the driveway while I trotted out my new snow blower. I snew blew and shoveled, backed the car in and shut the garage - SAFE!

The next morning I had to snow blow again to get out for church. There was a pretty good crowd there, even with the snow still pouring down. Here in Lake Effectville, you don't let snow stop you. If you do, you'll be pretty much stopped from the end of November until the end of April.