Very rare "Lake Effect Storm" for late summer early fall. A result of this anomalously cool/cold weather spell

[Cheezoholic]

3. There's a section of the Mississippi river in IA/IL behind dam/lock #16 East of Muscatine IA over to the Quad cities

where it runs directly East to West. If the conditions are just right there in winter with a very cold north wind (and some other microclimate factors) when the river is still fairly warm and hasn't started to freeze over, the river is wide enough that areas just to south in IL can get a "river effect" snow sometimes up over a foot wile places beyond that short East West corridor of the river get zip! (I've actually driven over there to witness this lol). You can actually occasionally see a small snow band on radar in that area similar to what you would see in the massive lake effect snow bands that hit places like Buffalo NY. If your a weather nerd like me watch that area before the river starts to freeze in early winter. It's pretty wild to see an intense snow band all by it's lonesome with cold clear skies elsewhere.

There are many isolated instances in winter before lakes freeze where even moderate sized lakes (say 100 acres up) are known to cause microclimate lake effect snows of a few inches. While lake effect snows, isolated or not and enhanced rainfall closer to the lakes embedded in broader swaths of rainfall are expected, isolated strong summer convective bands like we saw this morning off of lake Michigan are pretty rare. There were also a few confirmed water spouts with that band over lake Michigan and some over both Huron and Erie this morning, which of course is a hazard to anyone in a boat or anyplace near the shore if the waterspout should move that way and become small tornadoes.

It's pretty amazing when we get these wide temperature variations between these bodies of water, both small and large, and the atmosphere. Obviously I'm a bit fascinated by these quirky weather setups.