Log 2016121002

When hiking the Buckeye Trail's north, the winter is a beauty of a different kind.  Weather forecasters are pretty good these days, but you go there for a hike and realize that they made a mistake.  Or you forget to check it at all.  Here's what you should know...

Geauga County's northern border looks like a set of stairs.  Imagine that you have a pencil and ruler and draw a line across the outer edges of those stairs.  That's the Lake Effect Ridge.  Lake Erie is 568ft above sea level.  The ridge runs about 1000ft and is about 10 miles from the lake.  Right there on the apex is where progression of the weather fronts (ie snow storms) will nearly stall out over.

Now, most people in NEO will say that's it, but it doesn't end there.  From the edge of that west stair, a secondary effect of this will extend through Mayfield of Cuyahoga County and south to Downtown Akron of Summit County.

Both the Burton and Bedford Sections have segments that occur in Geauga County.  On Bedford as it clips the NW corner of Chester Township, it's in a lesser affected portion of it, but it's still Geauga.  As for Burton Section, the Buckeye Trail (as an entire circuit) is only impassable for 6 days a year in a bad winter.  And Burton is responsible for most of these.  White out conditions occur there 3 - 4 times a year on average.  Geauga County still uses the snow emergency level system.  When a level 3 is declared, everybody must get off the roads, including pedestrians.

I'm a native of this area.  So, lets say that you went hiking on Burton Section and on your drive home, you got caught in a Lake Effect snow storm in Geauga County.  In my opinion, there's never been much of an Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) presence there.  Every highway in the county will probably be bad to drive on... except OH-44.  It won't be great, but it's usually the best highway in the county.

In Lake County, I-90 is higher up along the side of the ridge.  In a lake effect snow storm, it's likely to be more affected.  But the OH-2 freeway that parallels it to the north is lower in elevation and isn't usually as bad.  But sometimes in an odd storm, such as a blizzard, the reverse can be true and lower areas in Lake County are more affected.