Freak Snowstorm in Buffalo, NY

[WildCowboy]

I grew up in Buffalo, but this is just plain weird weather even by Buffalo standards. Two feet of snow in mid-October?!?

I talked to my parents this morning, and they said that 95% of homes in the area are without power and trees are down everywhere. The street tree in front of their house lost 3/4 of its branches. Word is that power may not be restored until Tuesday...yikes. My grandmother and sister are both without power and phone.

Anyway, send good thoughts to the hardy folks of Western New York, especially our MR members up there...skoker and amacgenius are two of the more prominent ones, but there are a lot of them! Hope everything works out okay and we see them back here soon.

Linkety (http://www.cnn.com/2006/WEATHER/10/13/ny.snow.ap/index.html)

[jsw]

I grew up in Buffalo, but this is just plain weird weather even by Buffalo standards. Two feet of snow in mid-October?!?

Yeah, that's rough. I spent over a decade in CNY and spent a lot of time in Buffalo, and still have friends and in-laws there. That is amazing - in a bad way.

[bousozoku]

Definitely weird. I watched the snow coming down in Chicago while they were getting to the Apple store on Oprah. We in Floriduh are going to have a special hardship as well as the daytime temperature Saturday is dropping to 80 degrees F. ;)

Hope the people stay off the snowy roads. I'd hate to hear about a 200 car pileup.

[WildCowboy]

Hope the people stay off the snowy roads. I'd hate to hear about a 200 car pileup.

All the downed trees should help. My father had to slalom around some of them to head to one of two gas stations in the area that still had power last night in order to get some gas for their generator. That was before it got really bad.

Buffalonians are pretty good at sitting tight until things get cleared up...it's usually not too long when it's just snow, but the trees are going to cause some problems there for a while.

[gauchogolfer]

I have an English friend who just moved to Buffalo about a month ago, so I'm sure he's feeling pretty out of his element. To make it worse, he's lived for the last few years here on the Cote d'Azur, where today I wore shorts and a t-shirt. Quite the change :D.

[Chundles]

Saw the story on "Good Morning America" at 4:30am this Saturday morning. 2" of snow an hour?!?!

It's going to be 38°C here today....

[rdowns]

Snow in September is the reason I only spent a year in college near Buffalo.

Trees can't handle all the snow and its weight when they have so many leaves still on them.

[gonyr]

I'm a little north of Buffalo, just outside of the worst hit areas. Still, we got about 6-8" of snow, and about 100 tree branches down. We didn't lose any trees altogether, but a couple good sized limbs around 10 inch diameter fell.

I spent the day today helping my sister in law clean up her yard. She was pretty much in the center of the storm. She got about 20 inches of snow, and her formerly shaded yard is now completely sunny, and dominated by a few fifty foot tall tree trunks with now branches. No power or phone there as the cables were torn right off the house.

The good news - we are in the lucky few that got our electricity back this afternoon. It was out for about 48 hours, but luckily, we bought a generator a few years back, so no real hardships. The generator is already out on loan to a friend of a friend in Buffalo.

[thedude110]

I miss Western NY.

In Central CT the leaves are beautiful and the restaurants are OK but there's no real excitement.

I came this close to doing graduate work in Buffalo at two different times in my life. Now I'm burnt out enough that 2 feet of October snow looks delicious.

[WildCowboy]

Just talked to my parents, and they're still without power...72 hours and counting. The folks across the street have power now, so hopefully they'll get theirs back soon. Officials are saying that restoring power to the last customers will likely take until next Sunday...ten days without power. Yikes.

[dmw007]

It is quite odd weather, glad that there is no snow in my area....yet. :)

[skoker]

Hey all-

No time to talk, but I'm OK. State of Emergency in effect, no school all week. Take care.

[WildCowboy]

Hey skoker...glad to see you check in. Hope things are looking up in your area...hang in there!

[dmw007]

Hey all-

No time to talk, but I'm OK. State of Emergency in effect, no school all week. Take care.


Glad to hear that you are okay. :)


Look on the bright side, no school! :D :)

[iGav]

Yeah, that's rough.

is it balls... it's the best thing ever. :D

[munchmime]

The worst part is the no power, and the freezers thawing. This is kind of over blown, and way out of proportion, distorted heavily.... I mean clean up is a problem, but most roads are clear... most phones work, the cable is on... just no power still for most of us. ohhh, and most of the snow is melted.

on the bright side (not really) I work for UPS and we are shoving the work through as normal... though I'd rather have had the time off, the weekend was time an a half pay.

With the coverage that this is getting, I woiuld have rather had a storm drop 7ft of snow in 24 hours again. not like we get as much snow as the nation thinks we do.

[MacBoobsPro]

I have an English friend who just moved to Buffalo about a month ago, so I'm sure he's feeling pretty out of his element. :D.

Too true. Here in England, 1" of snow can and will bring an entire city to its knees. Its embarrassing!

Last winter it snowed for about 1 hour, it was pretty heavy but it was only about 1" that settled we were allowed to leave work early because it was 'bad'. Jumped in the car, 20 minute journey took 2 hours. Truly embarrassing!

[jsw]

As an indirect result of talking to relatives in Buffalo, I've now obtained a portable generator and have ordered a transfer switch (to make it easy to switch circuits over to the generator) - we lose power fairly often anyway, and stories of the blizzard were the final straw needed to get me to do something about it. Once it's all installed this weekend, I'll be at least reasonably set should something like that happen here - which isn't unlikely (at least in terms of power outage duration). It'll add peace of mind during the winter and during the wet spring season (so the sump pump won't lose power).

[skoker]

As an indirect result of talking to relatives in Buffalo, I've now obtained a portable generator and have ordered a transfer switch (to make it easy to switch circuits over to the generator) - we lose power fairly often anyway, and stories of the blizzard were the final straw needed to get me to do something about it. Once it's all installed this weekend, I'll be at least reasonably set should something like that happen here - which isn't unlikely (at least in terms of power outage duration). It'll add peace of mind during the winter and during the wet spring season (so the sump pump won't lose power).

Consider yourself lucky- I had to run last night because I had to go pump out my grandmas sump- and the 18 + inches of water in her basement. We're the only ones in our entire extended family to have a generator (which we bought during the Big Blackout of 03). My uncle went to Albany to get a generator, but nobody had them- everybody from here went there Friday night and sold out the entire state.

[WildCowboy]

The worst part is the no power, and the freezers thawing. This is kind of over blown, and way out of proportion, distorted heavily.... I mean clean up is a problem, but most roads are clear... most phones work, the cable is on... just no power still for most of us. ohhh, and most of the snow is melted.

on the bright side (not really) I work for UPS and we are shoving the work through as normal... though I'd rather have had the time off, the weekend was time an a half pay.

With the coverage that this is getting, I woiuld have rather had a storm drop 7ft of snow in 24 hours again. not like we get as much snow as the nation thinks we do.

Glad to hear things are shaping up...still a lot of people without power though...over 200,000 customers. Many schools are closed for the entire week to give the school buildings time to get power back, get displaced residents back into their homes, and to finish getting roads and sidewalks (that's a big one for a lot of kids...not much has been done to clear sidewalks yet), etc.

Haven't called my parents yet today to see if they've got power back...my grandmother got hers back yesterday; don't know about my sister's place.

The seven-foot storm between Christmas and New Year's a few years ago did suck. I had gone soft after four years in Virginia and a few more out here in NorCal...it had to happen while I was visiting for the holidays.

[amacgenius]

Hey all-

No time to talk, but I'm OK. State of Emergency in effect, no school all week. Take care.

skoker and I never lost power, and we've been fine. But yeah the Buf was covered, it's starting to clear up though, although some might not have power until next Monday.

[WildCowboy]

skoker and I never lost power, and we've been fine. But yeah the Buf was covered, it's starting to clear up though, although some might not have power until next Monday.

Glad to hear you guys made it through okay...I thought you might have escaped the worst of it down where you guys are.

My parents are still without power...coming up on four days now. The sound of the generator is really getting to them and their sleep-deprived since the generator needs to be fed every three hours. It's also demoralizing that the houses across the street have had power for 24 hours now, yet they're still in the dark. The good news is that the large tree that took down the line that serves their area appears to have been cleared up and the line restrung. Hopefully it's just testing the line now before they turn the juice back on...it would be nice if they could have it by nightfall.

[amacgenius]

Glad to hear you guys made it through okay...I thought you might have escaped the worst of it down where you guys are.

My parents are still without power...coming up on four days now. The sound of the generator is really getting to them and their sleep-deprived since the generator needs to be fed every three hours. It's also demoralizing that the houses across the street have had power for 24 hours now, yet they're still in the dark. The good news is that the large tree that took down the line that serves their area appears to have been cleared up and the line restrung. Hopefully it's just testing the line now before they turn the juice back on...it would be nice if they could have it by nightfall.

We've had Friday, Monday and Today off of school because a big majority of our teachers live out of district (we're Union free http://www.eaur.wnyric.org) and so a lot of them don't have power so they can't come into work.

So yeah, it really sucks for them, and it's alright here, our snow melted on Saturday.

[JMax1]

I called my parents who are still in Buffalo from the beach in Florida the day after. They weren't too pleased as they sent me pictures of all the trees they lost in the yard.

[WildCowboy]

My parents finally got power back this afternoon after almost five days. There are still over 100,000 customers without power. Things are mostly back to normal in areas where power has been restored, but there are still some traffic lights out causing havoc. The forestry folks have brought a lot of the low-level damaged tree limbs down using chain saws on poles, but there are still a lot of tree limbs in the upper reaches of the trees that they haven't been able to get to yet. They'll likely cause isolated power issues for weeks to come as they eventually fall down.

[Phat Elvis]

My parents still don't have power. They were in Boston when the storm hit and had to cut short their visit to go clean up home. That sucks. Luckily they bought a generator in Boston and drove it to Buffalo. Lots of water in the basement. Lots of cleaning up to do.

One of their neighbors had his generator stolen off his front lawn. Looks like looting isn't just a southern thing ;) .

It's funny how you have to actively search to find news about what is happening there, it seems there is a law that all Buffalo news must go directly to the 'weather' page. Good luck to everyone in Buffalo.

[skoker]

We finally went back to school today (only district that did) but they're making it up to us my giving us a half-day and a Pep Rally (read=blowoff) tomorrow. My afternoon is then booked up by walking down Main Street in my PJ's in the parade.

Logic: Hmm, 11 people DIED in this STORM so let's have a PARADE?!?