Buffalo October 2006 Storm Gallery - Page 11

Everybody's calling the storm that hit Buffalo Thursday and Friday, October 12 and 13 (2006) something different, or the "surprise" storm. Born & raised here, I wasn't surprised, & was ready for it, so I feel thaty name is invalid. It wasn't simply a blizzard, like that epic monster back in 1977 that piled snow so high you didn't walk through fences or around the stalled cars, you just walked over them. Nor was it an ice storm. One weather reporter call it "thundersnow," which is as good as anything I've heard.

Outsiders think of Buffalo as a city of snow and ice, but they've got it wrong.

Many of Buffalo's houses are set back from the street, so they have green lawns, gardens &, in most areas, greenways between the sidewalks and the roads. Many homes have pools in their backyard, & air conditioning to beat the intense & humid summer heat. Visitors are often surprised by the vast expanse of green when you fly over the city into the Buffalo airport in spring and summer, or how the gorgeous colors of fall are throughout the city. For locals, it's always one of the pleasures of coming home. Buffalo is a city of trees: maples, oaks, chestnuts, ash, sycamores. But now half of the trees are gone, & most of the other half severly damaged. Many of the trees still standing won't survive the damage.

Thanks for sending in more pix folks. Again, sorry about the quality. Some of these photos are from small pocket cameras, cell phone pix, vid caps from camcorders of all kinds, or were taken while moving, or in low light. I tried to clean them up wherever possible. Because of the power failures, people took pix with whatever was available, & still had a charge.