Buffalo October 2006 Storm Gallery - Page 4

They're calling this the "October Surprise Storm" or "Friday the 13th Surprise Storm". What surprise? Most news & weather agencies in the country warned about this storm was coming our way almost a week in advance. And just about anybody who lives in this area knows about "Lake Effect storms", where when a storm passes over the warmer Great Lakes, it picks up a lot of extra moisture, & dumps it on the land... usually in the form of snow. When I woke up Friday morning, I wasn't surprised at all, except I was shocked at how very few were prepared for it. In Buffalo, one should be prepared for almost any weather, power outages, transportation stoppages, & driving or travel bans during or after a storm. This is not new, we should be used to it & ready.

And there was no Friday the 13th storm. The storm started on Thursday afternoon. Before midnight half the trees & power lines in western NY state were on the ground, & most of the people were without electricity. After midnight & in the pre-dawn hours, the storm was already winding down. By daylight, it was a pretty nice October day... except for all that snow, ice, & destruction laying around, & some ice-melt flooding.

Sorry about the poor quality of some of the pix BTW. Due to lack of power in the area some of these are vid caps, some of which were taken from a moving vehicle with a VHS camcorder, & others were grainy, cheap, low-resolution cell phone pix. I did my best to clean them up, but just like in the Mars Gallery, there wasn't much that could be done to improve the poorest ones.