Snow Day in October

I'm lucky I even have power; something like 400,000 people have none and it won't come back on until at least Monday if not later. It looks like a disaster area--that picture from the news is only a smidgen of what things look like. I'm going to try to upload the footage I took: I went out with my video camera because I couldn't begin to use words to explain things. Check back later and I'll have it up.

Our street is just littered with branches and fallen trees. I woke up at 3am Thursday night to go shake off one of my landlady's trees; she lost the other one. There was thunder and lightning, and you just heard limbs cracking and crashing to the ground throughout the night. One did fall on my car--dented the roof like crazy but I think it's still drivable, once they get the roads cleared of our TWO FEET of snow and countless tree limbs. I kid you not--it looks like the Apocalypse out there. There's a driving ban, and people were trapped on the Thruway (Rte. 90) since Thursday night at 11pm and didn't get moving again until sometime Friday afternoon due to a jackknifed tractor trailer.

Friday morning DF and I were like little kids on a Saturday morning: Even though we didn't have to go to work, we were up and outside by 7:15, headed to Latina (grocery store) to get supplies. Thankfully they were open, and I think the rest of Buffalo quickly depleted them of basic supplies and beer. Everyone was outside pulling up branches, headed to someone else's house to play games and get some heat, shoveling.... It was unbelievable. Nothing's going to get any of this moved but chainsaws and hard labor. A number of places don't even have water and my dad just told me he's bailing out his sump pump every three hours so it doesn't overflow.

The problem was that since none of the trees have lost their leaves, much less even changed color, the incredibly wet, heavy snow was too much for everything and the trees couldn't stand the weight. I heard on The Weather Channel that the snow weighs 12lb. per square foot, which probably explains why none of the trees could take it. If you click on that link right now, you can see a brief slideshow of pictures from Buffalo. Here's an article, too, about the Buffalo snow.

I call it Friday the Thirteenth: Winter's Revenge.