Dying at home, pulchritudinous mixture of splendor and desolation. And now that i got that out of the way:
It’s not just the ice, but the dynamo that generated it. It’s a type of localized weather/atmospheric phenomenon endemic to specific geographies. Like Santa Anna Winds, the Ninas, or Tornado Alley, Lake Effect is peculiar to its place, The Great Lakes. Although it can occur in any month, it has its season, and, in my own experience, October through December are the radical months.
In lake effect the leeward sides of land that buttress the southeast shores of the Lakes are subjected to clouds and precipitation, generated by passing weather systems. It’s a weather phenomenon that, on a large scale, takes place in only a couple of places throughout the world. The manifestation of great cloud blooms is the good part. Winter lake effect is also waves of rain, snow and ice, with hawk-like winds. As ice cold air whips over relatively warm water on the Great Lakes, things happen.
The moisture laden low clouds disgorge their contents passing over the land, particularly in the higher elevations just inland and as far out as 150 miles from the lake shores in the the snow belts. Chardon Ohio, sitting 700 feet high on a ridge, 10 miles south of the lake, receives the most snow in the state at an average 106 inches. Lake effect snow and rain is often referred to as a machine since the precipitation is continuous until the winds subside or switch direction, which, sometimes, is days on end. While cold winds pick up moisture from the lake and drop it on land before the Lakes freeze over, the shores are smashed with big fresh water waves and winds. Cleveland, nestled in a crook of the lake shoreline, as it hooks to the northeast at the Cuyahoga River, is the southern terminus of the Erie snow machine. Lake Effect barrels in from the north and northwest, creating wild waves that smash on contact with whatever lies on the city limits at the shore: an eight lane highway, multiple rail lines, the entire downtown, an airport, a sports stadium, the Port of Cleveland, the entrance to the harbor and the Cuyahoga River, a power plant, two state parks and homes on either end of all this commerce. ICE was shot at the two state parks on the east and west sides of Cleveland’s shore.
On December 14, 2010 a lake effect storm hit Cleveland, Ohio that was immediately deemed the “Almost Blizzard” of 2010. It was called this, no doubt, because it didn’t equal the benchmark Blizzard of 1977. Decoded: winter storms are so common around here that even a storm with sustained 60mph winds, huricane gusts, in temperatures of 10 degrees, dumping lots of snow on land, freezing out and paralyzing the entire waterfront, is pretty much typically “Cleveland.”
But the “Almost Blizzard” did produce interesting effects on objects that dot the northern limits of the city on the coast of Erie, producing the best ice badlands I’ve seen there. Like the great American badlands of the west, the Erie ice badlands are formed by the action of weather over time. Weather events are swift, differing from geologic time in duration, but the results are similar, creating formations that are the face of weather and erosion, if not randomness and chaos. In this case repeated episodes of wind-driven rain and waves, resulted in layers that built up over a 24 hour period.
This ICE storm had temperatures around 10 degrees and unceasing winds along a fifty mile fetch of fresh water, slamming into Cleveland as ice on the waterfront and waves of snow just inland from the shore.
Bad weather, good picture, an aphorism I’ve shot by. Shoot now, don’t hesitate, and manage the regret of not acting. Weather is a quick event, so, you too, must be quick.
ICE was shot on December 17th and 18th on the east and west sides (of the Cuyahoga) in the city of Cleveland as it ends at the lake. The storm ceased very early on the morning of December 15th, the sun broke, but 2 days of low clouds moved in after that. The skies broke on the 17th and 18th and by this time the ice had started to yellow, but had not changed, as if made of stone. This book was shot on those two days. By Sunday, the 19th another softer lake effect event came in, coating everything with a soft thick five inches, and, just like that, the ornate gothic ice land was draped shut.
The skies over Northeast Ohio are where many weather systems converge producing cloud shows and bad weather like this lake effect event. The effect of Erie is felt from Cleveland, through Erie PA, Buffalo NY, and an arc 200 miles inland from Syracuse to Pittsburgh and back up through Warren and Youngstown. These are the snow belts where a lot of the liquid from the lakes ends up as ice, snow and rain, at least until Erie is sealed with ice.
December weather swings wildly and is a good month for ice storms, waves and even fog which requires, of all things, calm. In December there’s still plenty of open water or “fetch” on the lake as nature still hasn’t made its total commitment to winter yet. The first great storms of winter begin to appear often between December 7th and 14th.
As far as natural things are concerned i wouldn’t have anything good to say about Cleveland. Nature has left nothing of resplendence there (while conceding that the man-made terrain of Cleveland has a history of supreme negative resplendence). That’s why these Ice Badlands, and, in general, the local atmospheric conditions that produces them, are significant. The fact that a place like this, that is the dividing line between the very end of the Appalachians and the very beginning of the Plains, could produce such a cloud park of vaporous and liquid forms, that rivals any official state or national park terrain, is an unusual gift of nature. In this city on the lake it’s so obvious, it can be hard to see, in the smoke from the “factory of sadness.” Always fleeting, but always returning, after all, everything, even geologic things are slowly but surely transient. Stratified, lengthy geologic time and chaotic evolving weather time, can both produce hoodoos under the right conditions. And, like the things at the local museum three miles away, it’s also free.
The local geography, I’ve found, is one of ennui and sadness. The terrain is plain, with weather extremes on top. The action of a big-ass Lake on a fairly bland terrain is a cold enhancement. Here one should look skyward, for lots of reasons. Fortunately the atmosphere there can provide the rejoinder for dealing with the flora, and particularity, the fauna, below it. Veering continually from explosive to tranquil, commonly dramatic, and always changing, the sky and weather is a shoe that fits the city’s unusual psychogeography well.
It’s not the place immediately associated with natural grandeur, but it is a place where the skies compensate. During the winter, the water is drawn up, frozen, then disgorged on the prosaic land, briefly making it phenomenal, before it ages swiftly into cold bleakness and desolation. The snows “off the lake” until it freezes, can be massive, continuous affairs. Buffalo once received 84 inches in one of these lake effect events that lasted over a few days. That’s radical, natural and unusual.
When the moisture descends, it can leave monumental heaps of snow, but when the ice storms hit, a couple of times a year, that’s, as said locally, “wicked” or, even, “killer.” More than snow, everything is a wonder when covered in ice, particularly the trees in a Forest City, turning white and crystalline. In winter the town’s real badland lies on the shore, always arctic in winter, it freezes into a deserted ice park every year. But it was the Almost Blizzard in 2010 that by far, bestowed the best crop of lake effect ICE seen in a long time.
Cleveland, the land ain’t exactly exalted, but the skies are. Its fleeting temporal creations, as sublime as those in our best American badlands and parks. In its urban setting the ice badlands seem to objectify the peculiar psychology of the place.
What strikes me about these ice formations is, if one were to be so trapped as to having to continually look at the place wondrously, to provide symbolic relief, then, ultimately, I’m sure the city’s sheer indecipherability, compounded by duration, is all you could walk away with. After all, “It’s Cleveland.”
It is a certified Going Under Project.
VIEW the slideshow.