Nature’s greatest snow machine, where crazy amounts of snow can fall in huge snowstorms on the downwind — leeward — side of a lake. Where the effect is pronounced, such as on the East of some of the Great Lakes in the US, it can generate regions known as snow belts because of the amount of snow they receive.

It works kind of like this: cold air blows over a lake. As the cold air passes over the warmer lake it picks up water vapour from the lake and it warms. This causes it to rise and in turn cool, such that when it reaches the downwind side of the lake it is now a lot of cold moist air which can cause some incredible snowstorms, like 2–3 inches of snow per hour. Satellite pictures like these show it in action pretty clearly. If the land rises after the lake the air can cool faster and increase the effect — and also cause a rain shadow — and if there’s a whole lot of convection and the air is rising fast you can get what’s called thundersnow — a thunderstorm in a snowstorm. I know.

Find weather interesting? Me too. You might also be interested in: Dirty thunderstorms, thunderclouds, yesterday’s weather (applying weather forecasting to software engineering), rain shadow, lenticular clouds, know your cirrostratus from your altocumulus, and British weather.

Lake-effect snow

The Oxford comma is the comma after the penultimate item in a list. It’s normally a matter of style — you can happily choose to leave it out — though in some cases it can clarify what would otherwise be an ambiguous meaning, as in this well-cited book dedication “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.” Or, more pertinently, in a recent legal case where ambiguity hinging on the lack of an Oxford comma is costing a dairy firm a $5m overtime payment to its drivers.

The Oxford comma

Manipulating someone psychologically such that they start to doubt their own sanity. Lying or deceiving persistently can plant seeds of self-doubt in the minds of someone else. At first, it is likely to be easy to resist, but if it continues people can start to question their own reality or start to think they may be going crazy.

The term comes from the play Gas light by Patrick Hamilton where a husband tries to convince his wife, played by Ingrid Bergman in a 1944 film adaptation, that she imagined the dimming of gas lights in their house, which was, in fact, due to him searching for jewels in the flat above.

The term has been used in sociological, psychiatric and political contexts among others.

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Gaslighting