How the warming Great Lakes could herald a new era of supercharged snowstorms [Video]

Sarah Bauer woke up to a shaking house.

She thought maybe an earthquake had struck near her home in Torrance, a village in Ontario’s cottage country.

But when she looked outside, she saw a massive tree had collapsed onto her driveway under the weight of rapidly accumulating snowfall, taking down a power line with it.

“It was freaky,” she said.

The storm that hit parts of central Ontario in late November and early December was the biggest in recent memory, meteorologists said, reportedly dumping a reported 140 centimetres on Gravenhurst, a town just south of Torrance.

Another round of intense lake-effect snow hit areas off Lake Huron again this week, with further squalls expected into the weekend.

Areas off the Great Lakes are used to big snowfall events, earning the title of Ontario’s snowbelt.

Yet something new is happening. Climate scientists and meteorologists say climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is helping create conditions that can strengthen the storms.

Richard …