Do the Great Lakes normally freeze over in winter?
Only Lake Erie because it's so shallow.
The other lakes are too deep and have too much heat reserve.
Once Lake Erie freezes over, it essentially shuts down the lake effect snow machine for western NY.
This time of year is particularly rough for lake snow events. The warmer the lake water, the more snow is produced so early season events like this can dump a LOT of heavy, wet snow and cause a lot of problems.
In December 1976 Lake Erie froze over the earliest on record. a lot of lite snow built up on the lake ice over the next month. Then around the middle end/of January 1977 a blizzard hit. We had 75 MPH winds. In Orchard Park we got over 3’ of snow. Schools were all closed for a week. I was 14 at the time. The drifts were huge because of the wind. It blew all that snow off the lake east towards Buffalo and the south suburbs.
They asked anyone with a snowmobile to report to their local fire stations. A couple of my buddies delivered food to elderly people. A lot of the roads were impassable. Even the main roads. I remember being on the back of a buddies snowmobile going down the main north/south road in town. We hit a bump. I looked back and we had driven right over a stuck car.
A couple months after that we had an ice storm in March. everyone lost power. Broken trees/limbs down everywhere. Again, another week of no school. I think we had to go to school until almost July that year to make up for all the snow/ice days.