Upstate N.Y. digs out after big storm as more snow is expected to fall

[Godhumor]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- More lake-effect snow could blanket parts of upstate New York Friday, forecasters said, as residents continue digging out from a storm that shut down a major highway and left up to six-foot-high drifts in its wake.

...

But forecasters said the snowfall would taper off later Friday -- a welcome reprieve after some motorists in the Buffalo, New York area, spent much of Thursday stranded on Interstate 90 -- some of them for up to 20 hours. Emergency personnel with plows worked to dig their vehicles out despite continued and concentrated precipitation.

...

Tractor-trailers and passenger cars were marooned on two nearby four-mile stretches of the interstate -- one eastbound and the other westbound. While there was some movement by Thursday evening, large parts of the road remain closed to new traffic and the highway authority said it had no estimate when the interstate would reopen.

...

Many area residents woke up Thursday morning to drifts as high as four to six feet that, in some cases, blocked doors and driveways. Shifting winds from an east-moving front combined with record-breaking warm water temperatures in Lake Erie to create the intense early December storm.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/03/new.york.snow/index.html?hpt=T2

---

Just thought I would share what we're going through in Buffalo right now (Images also at the link). I've been through worse here, but the thruway shutdown has been a major, major story. Due to people being stuck in stranded cars for 16+ hours, many in the community are demanding answers on how we were so unprepared for a thruway emergency.

[ejpoeta]

1. so glad it missed us. my daughter was hoping for a snow day today.

it's baffling to me about the thruway... how many times does it have to happen where people end up stranded! oh we're going to look into it to figure out how to prevent it from happening again. yeah right.

[JackintheGreen]

2. Friend of mine just got a job up there.

He grew up in India. He starts next month. Bwah!

[Godhumor]

3. Heh, way back when I was a teacher we had a job fair in Buffalo

With school districts from all over the country, including Hawai'i. This job fair was in April...and it was snowing.

The Hawai'ian representatives had to open new interview slots due to the sudden increase in interest in teaching on the islands.

[PATRICK]

4. Thruway ill constructed

In order to avoid people cutting through to other side there is usually a big median(and often deep ditch) that makes it impossible, maybe to fortify the toll system than anything else. Utility crossovers for workers and police car speed traps seem the only concern. Anyway, I was stranded on the non toll section near Erie PA for that same amount with hundreds of other trucks and cars, most of the exits plugged by would be escapees. The only concern of the locals was their ice storm. Police only looked at us from the other side. There was NOTHING on the emergency band to even warn more cars from coming on in. Nothing on the radio.

It was the weekend and we did not make national, nor much on the local news though some were calling in from their cars to apprise the surprised DJ of our night long plight.

No news meant that people died the next time in a worse storm downstate and they discovered they had a problem.

Now years later NY is making the same discovery? The toll roads are made for tolls not flexibility in blockages.

I am beginning to think this the typical braindead American system afflicting everything right from the avoidable skimming of myself and many other area account holders in the area to business and government and general. On the weekend nothing happens. When you finally(too late) become newsworthy in an available media timespot, you get the same deer in the headlights "wow, imagine that, someone should do something" trivia that insults the remaining intelligence of the thinking population(Hello, out there?)

[hedgehog]

5. To be clear, I think you are describing the section of I-90 that runs through

Pennsylvania, so New York isn't responsible for that situation. People have not died on the New York State Thruway due to being caught in the weather.

The medians are designed to separate traffic flowing in two opposite directions. The goal is to prevent head-on collisions. A young woman was killed in Amherst, NY yesterday because her car hit a patch of ice, crossed an inadequate median on the Millersport highway and was t-boned by an on-coming truck.

The section of the Thruway/I-90 that was blocked the other night loops around the southern edge of Buffalo. It is heavily traveled by trucks and cars passing though the area and by people living in the area traveling from one town to another. That particular section has no toll barriers. In this case, the absence of toll barriers was part of the problem, since there isn't any easy way to block access. State and local police forces would have had to assign officers to close off about 20 access ramps across half a dozen or so jurisdictions.

I'd like to think the situation could have been handled better, but I'm not sure how. Any time there is an accident on an expressway anywhere, traffic quickly backs up for several miles. That's what happened in this case. The situation was aggravated because there were multiple wrecks blocking lanes in both directions. I suspect that as the temperature dropped, patches of the road flashed over into black ice. Anyways, that's when the magic of Lake Effect kicked in. While all those cars and trucks were sitting in a 10 mile long parking lot, it started to snow at rates of at least 1"/hour. By the time the wrecks were cleared, crews had to go out and clear 2' of snow from around each individual car and truck.

FWIW, my Dad lives a mile from where this happened and had no snow in his yard. My daughter lives about 3 miles away, and sent me pictures she took last night of the flowers still blooming in her front yard.

Lake Effect. Ya gotta love it!

[eilen]

6. I'm in the Syracuse area and we also have snow bands

coming off from the lake like that -- only Lake Ontario. We got some snow in that storm but nothing like you did in Buffalo. Buffalo typically gets dumped on earlier in the winter, we typically get it in January/February. I live right in one of the snowbands and see a lot of it although just a mile North (Oswego County) gets twice as much and a mile South of the Thruway gets much less. Then there are what I like to call the Bermuda Triangles of precipitation--- right around and above Pulaski going 81 North to St. Lawrence County and in that area going West before you get to Utica on Rt 90.

But hell, we don't get tornadoes, hurricanes (at least not very bad ones) nor earthquakes.. plus it keeps the riffraff out.

[hedgehog]

7. Rt 31 is the magic marker. Drive north on 481 and the road is clean and dry.

1/4 mile north of rt 31 and you can't see your own hood!

[eilen]

9. I live less than a mile south of Rt 31.

That is where I get my groceries.

[PavePusher]

8. So, people go out in bad weather, in ill-equiped vehicles, with piss-poor driving skills...

and the problem is "Thruway ill constructed"?! Fuckin' seriously?!


Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle again....

[hedgehog]

10. I was joking with my father that the real problem the other night

was that several truckers didn't realize how quickly weather conditions there can change, were driving too fast when the snow started, lost control of their rigs and caused the entire problem. If traffic had kept moving, the plows would have kept the lanes clear and no one would have even noticed the storm.

[Godhumor]

11. Yeah, the jack-knifed trailer was the first domino knocked over in this mess

Thankfully, the 90 looked clear again, today.