- What supposedly
synonymous-with-Siberia city is
entirely absent from these lists? Did anyone notice that the only place
in New York (Syracuse) to make a Top Ten is almost 200 miles east of
Buffalo? We used to get a lake-effect blizzard every year, but winters
in the new century have failed to live up to reputation. The
annual Winterfest in February has been canceled
more than
once due to lack of snow.
- Yes, we had a truly
spectacular storm in 1977, although it
wasn't fierce enough to make the
Top Ten Storms of the Century.
The famous
Blizzard of 1977 didn't begin in
Buffalo and end at the city line,
it
crippled the entire northeastern US and southeastern Ontario, Canada.
- Here's the big secret:
blizzards are fun.
We go
home and relax.
We shovel each other out. We make cookies and hot cocoa. Heavy snow is
the only
weather extreme that is so benign it can be used for recreation. I
refer,
of course, to skiing, ice skating, hockey, and snow sculpture. But,
hey,
if these aren't your cup of tea, then by all means kick back, pop open
your beverage of choice, and enjoy your tidal waves, tornadoes,
hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, heat waves, volcanic
eruptions, acid rain, droughts, floods, and insect plagues. Buffalo
just happens to be blessedly free of these disasters.
- Okay,
you're thinking, blizzards
still tie up a
city, don't
they?
They didn't used to. I am indebted to the late George Kunz for the
following insight. In his posthumously published
Buffalo Memories, Kunz wrote
about the streetcar era
and the heavy-duty trolley plows used to clear routes in the winter:
"I do not remember any protracted
urban paralysis following those storms of half a century ago. The
reason lies partially in the fact that transit ridership was high, and
streets were free of disabled cars. [Trolley] plows were
unhampered. Today most workers rely on motor cars for
commuting
to jobs. Many live outside the reach of mass transit in the country or
in the suburbs. Many others shun public transit, seized by a jejune
reliance on the personal car.
Given these facts, modern storm paralysis is understandable. Workers
drive cars, cars get stuck and are abandoned, snow plows cannot get
through to do their job. Result: traffic bans, closing of businesses
and
ultimately loss of future commercial contracts. The city bleeds."
(p.52)
This is quite
logical. If you have to clear only two dozen
streetcar
routes, your chances of success are much greater than if you have to
clear every one of an estimated 800 miles of streets (in the City of
Buffalo alone) for, say, 300,000 vehicles. In other words, snowstorms
don't necessarily paralyze cities, but automobiles, an unreliable form
of transportation in heavy snow, certainly do. Metro Rail,
our
short light-rail line, works fine in any weather. Service has been
curtailed or canceled
due to snow only three times since Metro Rail opened in 1985.
- Consider Johnstown,
PA, which has had a few spectacular
floods.
Buffalo has something in common with Johnstown, in that we do not spend
our winter under six feet of drifts any more than Johnstown
residents spend their summer under six feet of water. Thus it is that
the atypical event stands out, attracting widespread notice, thereby
obscuring the fact that it is, in fact, not
typical. There must
be
a name for this well-understood media distortion effect.
- In 1901, before the
advent of down parkas,
Polarfleece, snowproof boots, central heat, warm vehicles
with snow tires, mechanized snow plows, home insulation, weather
sealing, snowblowers, and radar weather prediction, this outsider
thought that our climate
was "delightful." Other 19th century sources chide us not for
snow but for high winds.
"The climate of Buffalo, with the
exception of high winds
during certain portions of the winter, is probably as delightful as
that enjoyed by any city on the globe.
In summer, the
temperature is nearly always moderate, and when other cities suffer
from extreme heat, the people of Buffalo are blessed with the
conditions common to late summer in other regions."
--Powell,
Lyman, ed. Historic Towns
of the Middle States.
New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1901,
p. 387. [Emphasis added.]
- My favorite weather
proverb, of unknown Scandinavian
origin, is, There is no such
thing as bad weather, only inadequate
clothing.
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