How does a lake or ocean affect the weather of the surrounding area?
Water has a higher heat capacity than rock, and thus changes temperature more slowly than the surrounding land. As a result, the air around large water bodies tends to show smaller temperature variations than areas without large water bodies. That is, near lakes and oceans, the temperatures tend to be cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than further inland. A second important factor is of course that water bodies are a source of humidity, of evaporating water. Thus, rain and snowfall tend to be higher on the downwind side of lakes and oceans. this is why northeasters are such terrible storms along the east coast fo the US, the wind is coming onto land from the ocean and carries a lot of moisture. The same thing applies to the great lakes snow belts (places like Buffalo New York) where precipitation is a lot higher on the sides of the lake that are generally on the downwind side of the water, or in the Pacific Northwest of the US, on the downwind side of the Pacific, or in Eng
