anyone know the difference between lake enhanced snow and lake effect snow?

Answer 1

Lake effect:
Precipitation which results from cold polar air flowing over warm lake water after passage of a synoptic cyclone.
Occures during unstable season when mean lake temperature exceed mean land temperature.
Overview of the Lake-Effect Process:
Occurs to the lee of the Great Lakes during the cool season
Polar/arctic air travels across a lake, picks up heat and moisture, and is destabilized
Cloud formation is enhanced by thermal and frictional convergence and upslope along lee shore

Mean annual snowfall exceeds 100 inches in the snowbelts to the lee of the lakes, and exceeds 200 inches in the Tug Hill Plateau in New York, to the lee of Lake Ontario and on the Keweenaw Peninsula of northern Michigan, to the lee of Lake Superior.
Conceptual Model of Lake-Effect:
Heat and moisture from lake + frictional convergence + upslope flow = clouds and lake-effect precipitation
Lake-Effect-type Phenomena in Other Regions:
Lake-effect (Great Salt Lake)
Lake-effect (Finger Lakes, NY)
Bay-effect (Chesapeake, Delaware, Massachusetts Bays)
Ocean-effect (Gulf Stream, Sea of Japan)

Lake Enhanced :
The additional precipitation resulting from a boundary layer fetch over a lake during a synoptic cyclone.(e.g., overunning) event
The majority of the heavy snowfall during the southeasterly segment may be characterized as a "lake enhanced", or more properly, a "combination" lake effect snow event (Dockus, 1985). Typically in such events, marginal or even conditional instability in the overwater environment and low capping inversions limit the development and/or intensity of significant lake effect snows. However, by superimposing a larger scale lifting mechanism (such as a mid-tropospheric shortwave trough) on the convective boundary layer, capping inversions can be lifted or erased, and parcels are lifted to saturation earlier in their overwater trajectories. In an unstable or conditionally unstable overwater environment, this often leads to bursts of relatively deep and intense lake effect convection embedded within weaker and broader synoptically forced precipitation. In this particular case, delta-T values between the water surface and 850-mb were at least 13C over Lake Huron, meeting accepted criteria for lake effect snow development (Rothrock, 1969). Clearly, large-scale lift associated with the approach of the short-wave trough enhanced the lake effect convection embedded within the larger-scale precipitation field and organized the low level flow into a persistent and confluent southeasterly pattern pointed toward eastern Upper Michigan.

Answer 2

Lake effect snow occurs often during the winter months. It takes place when cold Arctic air moves over the relatively warm water of Lake Ontario. During a cold outbreak, winds from the west or northwest bring the cold, dry, Arctic air over the warmer waters of Lake Ontario. As the Arctic air passes over the warmer surface of the lake, the air is heated strongly from below. Because the air is very dry, evaporation occurs into the air. The added heat and moisture near the surface makes the very unstable and turbulent.

Answer 3

Yes.

Lake effect is snow is not storm based. It is caused by evaporation when air flows over warm bodies of water and results in precipitation when that same air moves over colder land masses.

Lake enhanced snow is additional snowfall in a preexisting storm that occurs due to the addition of lake effect.

Answer 4

Good question. They are one and the same. As cold winter air comes across the relatively warmer waters of Lake Erie, for example, the air picks up water vapor from the surface, source of the snow, and the atmosphere becomes more unstable with the addition of the transfer of heat from the lake surface. By unstable I mean a parcel of air which is lifted is found to be warmer than its environment and continues to move upward. By the time the resultant clouds arrive at Buffalo, for example, the precipitation is often quite a bit.