Anyone who lives to the lee of the Great Lakes is familiar with a mesoscale meteorological phenomenon know as "lake effect snow storms". Lake effect snows are relatively local weather events that can cause some areas to receive as much as 100 cm of snow while other locations only a few tens of kilometers away may experience barely a trace. In particular, Lake Ontario, because of its length and orientation with respect to the prevailing winds, has an unusually well defined snowbelt with annual snowfall accumulations that exceed 500 cm. Lake effect snows have been recognized and studied for some time with much progress having been made in determining causative factors. Gaps, however, still exist in our knowledge as is evidenced by an inability to consistently predict the timing, location and amount of heavy snows. During the winter of 1990, a private power company, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Pennsylvania State University will collaborate in a joint field effort called the Lake Ontario Winter Storms Project (LOWS). The project will focus on improved understanding and prediction of intense local snowfalls to the lee of Lake Ontario. The field component will bring to bear on this problem advanced mesoscale measuring systems such as Doppler radar, wind and thermodynamic profiling systems, and a microwave radiometer. Under the National Science Foundation's program for Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI), the Principal Investigators (PIs) proposes to participate in the LOWS Project. The PIs bring to the project not only their meteorological expertise, but also they will contribute directly to the observational effort by fielding two mobile atmospheric sounding systems which will be operated by undergraduate students from RUI colleges in the area. Post field experiment research will concentrate on diagnostic studies and numerical simulations with the ultimate goal of gaining a better understanding of the environmental structure and physical mechanisms involved in the formation and maintenance of lake effect snows. The activities of the PIs complement nicely the other scientists involved in the project. //
