Buffalo October 2006 Storm Gallery - Page 12

It sometimes gets cold here, but rarely gets unbearably cold. It snows here, usually around the winter months (plus or minus a month), but rarely more than a few inches. Sometimes, as in the winters of 1976-1977 and 2003, we get heavy snowfalls, but that happens rarely. Winter doesn't bother us very much, but we do get annoyed when January & February get continuously too cold. We know how to drive in snow and ice, and we have clothing appropriate to it. For us, the moist or intense heat & bugs of the southern states is much more unbearable.

In winter, the towns south of Buffalo often get what the meteorologists call "lake effect snow"... Precipitation that occurs when cold air picks up moisture as it passes over the warmer Great Lakes, then dumps it when it moves over the cooler land. Rarely does that lake effect snow hit Buffalo. Most of the time when you see on national tv that Buffalo got two or three feet of snow in a lake effect storm, Buffalo itself really only got a few inches, but the towns south of Buffalo got most of it. National news doesn't differentiate Buffalo & towns that may be miles away, probably because outsiders never heard of them. So Buffalo becomes the landmark for the snow rather than the actually town who got most of it.

In 1976-1977 & 2003 Buffalo got it. And, Oct 12th 2006, Buffalo got it. There were a few other times we got some deep snow, but it was nothing by comparison. And it DOESN'T usually snow here in October, except for a light sprinkle occasionally around Halloween.