Large bodies of water have been called the great modifiers.
Water takes longer to warm up or cool down as compared to land mass.
People flock to lakes in the summer to have cool breezes and comfortable nights.
As a bonus, areas which are adjacent to lakes often get moderating breezes during the summer. Next to the ocean, those breezes can get strong, but at a lake they are usually just perfect.
Between the breezes and the heat-sink effect, lakefront areas can have a temperature as much as 10 degrees Celsius in moderation than places which are inland.
During the winter months, snow squalls form on the downwind side of lakes. They often produce larger amounts of snow than most storms of the season.
If you have ever heard about massive snows and shut down highways in the Great Lakes areas of New York State, then you know what I am talking about.
Snow squalls coming off the Great Lakes are hard to imagine until you have experienced one. Imagine being dumped on by a foot and a half of snow, while less than a mile away, there is sun and clear skies, they call these snow streamers. Narrow bands of lake effect snow.
Lake-effect snow is caused when cold air sweeps over the open water of a big lake and picks up some of its moisture. It hangs onto that moisture till it encounters land, then all that moisture lets go.
Some of these snow bands of snow can travel a long way inland.
When forecasting weather, you can see how important it is to take large bodies of water into calculations.
The breakdown of geography and weather, in the eBook, gives good references to the understanding of how land masses play a crucial role in how systems, slow, speed up and vary course along their routes.