For us winter really starts when Lake Erie freezes. The snow-covered expanse beyond my backyard is the lake. Yesterday, believe it or not, there was no snow or ice out there. This all happened overnight. Extended cold weather makes the lake sluggish as the surface begins to freeze. The lake behaves bizarrely at those times; wave patterns are erratic and strange. The lake had been in one of those periods.
It’s lunchtime as I write these lines and the weather has deteriorated badly since I took this photo at dawn. The wind has picked up significantly and created whiteout conditions. The lake has disappeared in a white cloud of snow.