Originally Posted by Geo Cruise

We get significantly more snow here in Barrie than in Toronto, Between Barrie and Huntsville about an hour and a half north of Barrie is called the snowbelt, we get streamers coming off Georgian bay and can get 3 feet over night or more at times, Toronto rarely gets hit by the lake effect snow and therefore does not get near the amount. I can drive 25 minutes south to my sisters home and she will have 4 feet less snow than we have, for cycling it simply makes it too dangerous to even try the snow banks get so large and the roads get narrower with the snow and most cars simply cannot react in time if a near miss is about to happen. Plus with the amount of snow we have on the ground even on a clear sunny day all you need is a gust of wind and you have an instant white out from the drifting snow. Some years we get of easy, last winter was a peach I wish we had mor like it, but the previous winter was horrid and we were buried. The streamers are hard to forecast until often the day of I have gone to sleep before with no warnings and woke up with a few feet in the yard. You may learn more details about it by googling lake effect snow, or lake effect streamers but as long as lajke huron and georgian bay have open water we never knoow what the next day could be like.