• Lake Erie water temperatures in Buffalo fell 15 degrees in November, from 55 to 40 degrees. The last time the lake was so cold on Nov. 30 was in 1976.

Lake Erie’s water temperature at the end of November fell to 40 degrees.

That’s the coldest Nov. 30 reading in Buffalo since 1976, when the lake temperature was 38 degrees.

Anyone old enough to remember November 1976 needs no further reminder of what happened the following January.

The lake froze, and sustained winds during the  of ’77 blew 3 feet of accumulated snow off the ice and dumped it across the Niagara Frontier.

Great Lakes  say it’s too early to tell if the lake’s present condition will lead to that kind of snow catastrophe this winter.

Until the lake freezes, there’s always a chance for lake-effect snow. But as the water turns colder, there’s less chance for a repeat of the heavy lake-effect snowfall that hit the area a couple of weeks ago.

“It really depends on what happens now and over the next few weeks or month,” said Eric J. Anderson, a forecaster at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Anderson said the cooling of the lake was speeded up by to the polar blast that recently dumped more than 7 feet of snow recently in some communities.

“The lake is primed,” Anderson said. “If the air temperature drops, the lake is ready to freeze.”

But could that spell trouble, too?

Buffalonians know as well as anyone that a frozen lake can be a blessing – there’s no more lake-effect snow.

“Once you seal it – once the water is not liquid – that cuts the evaporation” and with it the lake-effect snow, said George A. Leshkevich, a Great Lakes ice scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Signs of ice

Last winter, ice covered 92.5  of the Great Lakes – the most since 1979.

As of the middle of November, ice was already forming in some of the northern bays of Lake Superior. “It’s the earliest our office has on record for ice,” Anderson said.

Anderson called the early onset of ice “symptomatic” of a “cold year” over the Great Lakes.

A brutally cold winter, the late arrival of spring and a cool summer over the region kept lake temperatures – including Lake Erie – lower than usual this year. A warm autumn tempered those readings, at least until the arctic blast last month.

“Water temperatures on Lake Erie right now are very similar to what they were a year ago today,” Anderson said.