Yes. Only running/oriented north and south and out east and out west. All open in the middle. Yes. Plus when Lake Erie was slow to freeze over, cold air comes over it and makes TONS of snow.... Lake Effect. Ontario does same but at eastern tip of it. RT 81.
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I've read about it. Under the right conditions, one storm can dump several meters of snow in some locations.
Blizzard of 77 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_of_%2777
Yes and we were trapped "At Home" during this event. I was a teenager and my father was trapped driving home from work early. He stayed at a farm house along the way.
My mother used to cut and wash and syle women's hair having a shop in our home. Her current and last customer of the day was done and leaving around the noon hour.
It was cold and overcast, little or no wind and in the low 30's F. She gets in her car which is parked up near the house, a sea foam green Ford Torino, and she drives the 400ft down our driveway to RT 18 to go home.
In those 30 seconds the wind came up and started to gust above 60mph and snow began to start drifting in the drive way. It was instant.
She stopped at the end of the drive and could not see to turn onto RT 18. A blizzard has formed. Her car began to shake as the wind gets under it and my mother asked me to see if I can help her. We now could barely see the car from our house.
I said yes as I got on boots and a coat and said I think she is staying here for a while and my mother agreed.
As I walked to her car a snow drift 3 feet deep had formed in the drive.
I said she should walk to the home and I will put her car back up by the house. She agreed.
I waited as she walked to see her enter the home and then had to back her car through a now 5 foot snow drift.
And this continued until snow covered the roof of our house.
I've never experienced anything like that in my life!
The Gulf of Finland to the south of the country can have a similar influence under the right conditions. It is about 50% larger than Lake Ontario. It takes some time to freeze over. A strong southeasterly wind in January may capture a considerable amount of water vapor from the Gulf, freeze it and cause heavy snowfall on the south coast of Finland.
What makes it rare is the fact that the Gulf of Finland is to the south of the country. Southwesterly and southerly winds carry warm air. Southeasterly winds may be cold if the pressure field is such that the origin of those air masses is actually in the north.
The blizzard was very bad yes. Many died in it. Found them frozen to death in cars. We had snow drifts 20 feet tall. They had to take a long time to clear roads using bucket lifts and plows. Walk along the roads on top of snow and use pipes to check for cars below them in the snow. A mess....
That's really something else.
Nature in North America is in many ways more fierce and extreme than in Europe. There are earthquakes and volcanoes in some parts of Europe but other than that nature is much more tame here.
I think so yes. USA has many problem areas.
Western NY State is not too bad usually. You just learn to live with snow.
These events are too much however and even driving on a little snow can kill you.
You need to be careful and you can be blinded quickly by snow this way.
USA has tornadoes all through the center of the nation. Once Xenia Ohio had something like 75 tornadoes in one day.
Hurricanes get you all along the Gulf of Mexico so say Texas all the way around to Florida.
And California has earth quakes and as we see now forest or brush fires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Super_Outbreak
Maybe the least problematic area is the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific Northwest has a mild climate and Mt. Rainier is dormant and not a source of any concern to my knowledge. Or perhaps Hawaii, too. Eastern and Central Pacific tend to have colder surface water than Western Pacific.
And as if all that is not enough, there is the needless harms USA State(s) do to their own children and peoples.
Sounds right yes. We call it "Lake Effect Snow" it generates it. Lake Ontario is too deep to freeze over and Erie being shallow most all winters does freeze over. They install an ice boom in fall in the upper Niagara River to catch pack ice from Erie. They take that out in the spring thaw once it is over.
This shows the depth readings of Great Lakes in this case Lake Ontario:
https://ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/greatlakes/ontario.html