Pittsburgh is about 2.5 hours from Cleveland, which IS placed right next to Lake Erie, so your opening line automatically creates a disconnect from the reader. You also say that there’s snow on all of the houses, signs, cars, and streets…yet go on to say that the streets are empty. Empty of traffic or empty of parked cars muffled by a blanket of snow? You paint a picture of the latter.

I live in Pittsburgh, and if 2.5 hours is a long distance for you, then that’s why you didn’t understand. That’s nothing for a storm. As for the snow and empty streets, I get your point, but there was limited space for words. It seems like you got the point anyway. So my job was done.

The first paragraph cracked me up – that’s how I feel about winter in Boston.
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The first line did throw me; maybe instead of “right next” to Lake Erie, you wrote “near” or something, that’d be good.