October Snowstorm

"It's not going to stick because the ground is still too warm.  We nearly always see snow —at least flurries, in October."

Those would be my now immortal words to a coworker who moved to Buffalo from Florida last year.  I guess I was a little (!) wrong.  The official total was 22.6" at the airport.  At my house we were probably at about half that, but it's hard to tell because it was so wet that it packed down a lot.  And then it warmed up and started melting rapidly.  But in any case this was basically a "once a century storm" sort of thing.  There were predictions that we could see a few inches of snow with the "chance" of conditions producing "the perfect storm".  Which is exactly what happened.

I spent two long chilly days at home with the family, but had plenty of work to do around the house.  I don't have many trees in my yard, but my neighbor behind my house has two huge maples at the back of his lot.  These two trees dropped a good deal of limbs and debris in his yard, two other neighbor's yards as well as mine and  on my garage.  Thus there was plenty of cleaning up to be done.  Next up was hauling in wood and getting the fireplace going as it became clear that we might be without power for days.  Fortunately for us, it was "only" two days.  Others have not been so fortunate as they are still without power and in some cases, will be for the next week.  Compounding that was the rapidly melting snow and many have also been flooded.  Again, not me as we sit on ground that is always high and dry.  You can see the effects on my neighborhood from the pictures.  Fortunately the only tree casualty in my yard was my Japanese Maple that had a large branch fall on it and snap one of it's branches.  The other problem was my phone line's anchor pulled out of the house so the line fell in the street.  The wires remained connected so once the power came back on I still had phone and DSL internet access.

And that coworker?  Well, she unfortunately lives in Amherst, one of the hardest hit areas.  They got closer to 3 feet of snow and will be without power for quite some time yet.
October 16, 2006 @ 12:57 pm | Category:
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