Snow flurries hit Niagara Region as storm system brings 95 km/h winds and causes Lake Erie water levels to rise bringing ice on shore at Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada. Port Colborne through to Fort Erie often see some of the highest winds in Ontario because of the way Lake Erie is situated.
Lake Erie is oriented roughly on a southwest to northeast axis and that causes the winds to funnel up the lake to the east end when storms are out of the southwest.
Those winds and the axis of Lake Erie can also cause a seiche, which was evident in Port Colborne and Fort Erie said Geoff Coulson, warning preparedness meteorologist at Environment Canada.
He said the lake is a long, narrow, relatively shallow waterway … and when winds line up along the axis of the lake, it literally piles the water up - creating the seiche - at the Fort Erie end, while the lake levels are down in the Toledo (Ohio) area in the western end.
When the winds shift or die, the water that's been piled up sloshes back down toward Toledo.