Sara Bauer wakes up in a shaking house.

He thought the earthquake might have struck near his home in Torrance, a village in Ontario’s cottage country.

But when he looked outside, he saw a huge tree had fallen in his driveway under the weight of the rapidly accumulating snow, and a power line was down with it.

“It was weird,” she said.

The storm that battered parts of central Ontario in late November and early December was one of the largest in recent memory, with meteorologists reporting 140 centimeters in Gravenhurst, a town just south of Torrance. Thrown away.

Another round of heavy lake-effect snow near Lake Huron again this week, with more storms expected later in the week.

Areas away from the Great Lakes are used for major snowfall events, earning the title of Ontario’s Snow Belt.

Yet something new is happening. Climate scientists and meteorologists say climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels is helping to create conditions that can strengthen hurricanes.

Lake effect blizzards are likely to worsen.

Richard Rudd, a climate scientist who studies the Great Lakes, says that as the planet warms, snowstorms affecting the lakes will intensify.

“They are better interpreted as typical of the future rather than extreme compared to the past,” said Rudd, professor emeritus of climate and space sciences at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Lake-effect ice relies on the combination of cold air from the Arctic and the relatively warm water of the Great Lakes. As air moves over the lake, it picks up moisture and dumps it on communities downstream, with snowfall events often characterized by intense and localized storms.

These storms are common in late fall or early winter, when lake temperatures are still relatively warm. Meteorologist Arnold Ashton said snow cover during the depths of winter helps reduce evaporation.

“Typically, you don’t get it as often in January, February – certainly in February – because you have more ice on the lake,” said Ashton, a senior meteorologist with Environment Canada.

But the warmer the lakes, the more heat and moisture there is for those arctic air blasts, intensifying the snowfall. And because warm winters limit the amount of snow cover, those storms can extend deeper into the season.

“The Gravenhurst apocalyptic metre-and-a-half of snow was a late November, early December event … but warm weather,” Ashton said. With, these events can be delayed,” Ashton said.

Gravenhurst was under a state of local emergency for more than two weeks as crews cleared icy roads and tried to restore power to tens of thousands of customers. Stranded drivers had to be rescued from a highway that was partially closed for nearly three days.

After cutting down a fallen tree on their driveway, Bauer’s family in Torrance bought one of the last generators available at a nearby Canadian Tire, he said in a recent interview.

He said it took four days for his power to return, while it took more than a week for others.

“I’m really not used to getting this kind of snow this early,” Bauer said.

Trying to predict the effects of a changing climate on winter weather comes with uncertainty, meteorologists say.

Warmer lakes can mean worse snowstorms. But as winters are generally warmer, it’s also possible that the rain will fall faster. Fluctuations in temperature may mean that some of the larger snowfall events are followed by unseasonably warm weather, increasing the risk of winter flooding.

“In short, it’s a complex issue and it’s really like a blurry crystal ball into the future,” Ashton said.

Warming of the Great Lakes

A 2019 report by Canadian and U.S. scientists found that the Great Lakes basin has seen an increase in precipitation over the past century that outpaced the rest of the U.S., much of it due to unusually heavy rainfall. And comes down to snow events.

The Great Lakes entered this winter under one of their warmest spells in recent decades, caused in part by a hangover from the naturally recurring El Niño climate cycle that last winter. was on the rise.

According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, around the beginning of December 2024, four of the five lakes had warmer average surface temperatures in the first 11 months of the year than at any other point in the past three decades.

The lakes also recorded their lowest ice coverage last winter.

Climate scientist Rudd said storms affecting lakes should give lakeside communities pause.

“It should really inspire you to think about, ‘How can I manage future storms?’

That’s just what officials in Gravenhurst want to do. A debrief meeting is being planned for this month, a municipality spokesman said. A report is also being prepared for the town council on the cause of the storm and the local response.

Bauer said he was happy to see his neighbors helping each other through the worst of times.

He recalled how someone in his area used a snowmobile to help rescue an elderly neighbor from his snowy home and then offered him a place to stay.

“You can see the community coming together.”