Physics of Snow Streamers

 Today, I take a break from irritating the powerful, and look at a wonderful local thing  -- the snow streamer.

This is the radar.  Snow streamers will form a thick line, and then pour down white terror on anybody in that river.  

This is the wind field and you can see that it curves.  Lake Erie snow is making all the way to the East Coast.  What is the physics behind this?  Ha, I fooled you.  I don't do 'explanations' that you can put in a popular book.  There is  no physics these days.

If anybody did do physics, then there are just questions -- Are these rivers the exact same mechanism as the oceanic tropical plumes?  Does it go into a river right at the beginning, or is this forced in order to successfully travel?  These are all wonderful questions that will never be answered.

I remember being in a stationary streamer in London, Ontario.  The rate was more than an inch an hour.  Drive a little way down the road and it was gone.  

ps.  have you noticed that there are no more explanations of the cold using 'Polar Vortex Fairies', and the 'River of the Jet Stream' pushing cold?  It's all La Nina and how it will disappear tomorrow.