Lake-effect snow can form on small lakes just as it does in the Great Lakes. Salt Lake City, Fort Worth and Carson City, Nevada have all had bouts of snow from lakes. Inland lake-effect and ocean-effect doesn't just occur in the United States.
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Anywhere! Lake effect snow can occur over any unfrozen body of water where the fetch is long enough to gather enough moisture to create snow. Lake effect snow can occur over Lake Tahoe, the Great Salt Lake, the finger lakes, and even has been reported over rivers in the Midwest!
Lake Effect Snow (LES) is very common across the Great Lakes region during the late fall and winter. LES occurs when cold air, often originating from Canada, moves across the open waters of the Great Lakes.
Lake Erie is the only lake that routinely freezes each winter, and once it does, lake effect snow seldom occurs. In the U.S. lake effect snow commonly occurs across northern Wisconsin, western Michigan, northwestern New York, northwestern Pennsylvania and the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
Lake-effect snowstorms can produce 0.3- 1.5 meters (1-5 feet) of snow in single extreme events and can continues for days. The great Lake snow belts cover the lake shores and about 50-80 km (30-50 miles) inland before most of the lake-supplied moisture is removed by precipitation.
Due to the prevailing winds, areas south of Buffalo receive much more lake-effect snow than locations to the north. The lake snow machine can start as early as mid November, peaks in December, then virtually shuts down after Lake Erie freezes in mid to late January.
The heaviest lake-effect snow in the United States falls on the Tug Hill Plateau, south of Watertown, N.Y., at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, making this region one of the snowiest places in the United States. Syracuse, which is south of Tug Hill, is one of the snowiest bigger cities in the United States.
This storm was the result of a phenomenon called “lake effect snow.” It's one of the main reasons why areas near big lakes, like the Great Lakes, get such remarkable snowstorms. Such storms usually occur between November and February, not October.