Snowbelt is a term describing a number of regions near the Great Lakes in North America where heavy snowfall in the form of lake-effect snow is particularly common. Snowbelts are typically found downwind of the lakes, principally off the eastern and southern shores. Lake-effect snow occurs when cold air moves over warmer water, taking up moisture that later precipitates as snow when the air moves over land and cools. The lakes produce snowsqualls and persistently cloudy skies throughout the winter months, as long as air temperatures are colder than water temperatures, or until a lake freezes over.
In the United States, snowbelts are located southeast of Lake Erie from Cleveland, Ohio to Buffalo, New York, and south of Lake Ontario stretching roughly from Rochester, New York to Utica, New York, and northward to Watertown, New York. Other snowbelts are located on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan from Gary, Indiana northward through Western Michigan and Northern Michigan to the Straits of Mackinac, and on the eastern and southern shores of Lake Superior from northwest Wisconsin through the northern half of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Emptiness is form
The lines have yet to fill your face
But your time is still being taken away
I'm leaving now
Crawling north where it's cold and green
I'm leaving now
Going to see sights unseen
We are young, but not for long
Absentee, your silence has been noticed
With an open wound and bright hope
May swords of hatred fall from our hands
With an open wound and bright hope