No matter where you live in Canada, you are probably feeling the wrath of the holiday deep freeze.

It’s always a good idea to follow these simple driving tips when fog gets in the way.

You see it every time there’s a heavy rainfall: torrents of water running down streets, large lake-like “puddles” pooling in the middle of roads, flooding streets. Sometimes it doesn’t even take that much rain to produce these things.

The reason we see these each time we get a storm is due to the concrete jungle.

Typically, when rain falls, most of it is absorbed into the ground. During heavy rains, some water won’t be absorbed, but will be carried away above ground to areas where it will be absorbed.

This animation (by Chris MacDougall) and infographic (by Leo Kavanagh and Babak Najafi) explain how urbanization can lead to flooding.

Buffalo may be getting the worst of it, but Canadians aren’t out of the woods. Lake effect snow has also been falling around Toronto. Eric Sorensen explains what’s fueling these historic snowstorms.

Toronto called in the army after 113 centimetres of snow fell over two weeks in 1999. Now, imagine receiving that same amount in just 24 hours.

That’s just what parts of Buffalo are dealing with after battling snow for more than two days. The main cause of the 123-plus cm of snow (4 feet, for Americans) is due to lake effect snow.

Janet Cordahi built this infographic with the towering chief meteorologist Anthony Farnell, which compares the amount of snow that different areas of Buffalo received.