"Camelot" is the opening number in the musical of the same name. King Arthur sings of an idyllic kingdom in which:
"The winter is forbidden 'till December
And exits March the second on the dot."
Clearly, in the Great Lakes Region, is it's unfathomable that winter will leave the lakes by early March, because, well, lakes are lakes.
Water changes temperatures very slowly, so this time of year, our deep lakes are still quite cold. So if a cold air mass goes over the lakes, it may result in lake-effect snow. In contrast, warm air creates dense fog.
But it's a bit more complicated when air masses collide, resulting in the whiplash weather when one day is warm and pleasant, and the next frigid cold. And it gets even more complicated because the jet stream is not particularly stable this time of year.
And so the polar vortex no longer stays in in the far north and moist air can come up from the Gulf. The collisions create strong, sometimes damaging winds, slush and sometimes even flooding.
The sun still appears low in the sky, so even on a sunny day, warming is limited.
It's March in the Great Lakes. The climate is what the climate is...but we sure aren’t Camelot.
Our climate isn’t "perfect all the year."
But then, it turns out that Camelot wasn't exactly Camelot either.
