Another powerful wind storm is raking across upstate NY today. Much like the event that hit us three weeks ago on January 9th. The inital storm front this time was not as powerful as three weeks ago but the winds behind the frontal passage are certainly packing a little more of a punch. The winds right now seem to be letting up a little in the Buffalo area after two straight hourly reports from the airport of sustained winds at 53mph with gusts to 64 mph.
Quite a bit of damage around the area, lots of downed limbs, trees, power lines, traffic lights, semis blown over on the thruway. The airport is still opened but almost everything leaving town is canceled or delayed for a lenghty time. Almost all of the schools in the WNY area are closed. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 54,000 plus without power this morning. Lake Effect pockets are giving quick shots of white outs. One of the most interesting things is the flash flooding that is taking place along the Buffalo and Niagara Rivers. The ice that was being held in the lake is being forced over the boom with quite a bit of force and combined with the extra push of water from the lake the Niagara River is creating ice jams along the river. Something I can never remember happening before. Really curious as to what shape the ice boom is in right now after this storm.
More to come with pictures later! Stay safe today everyone!
Mike, you might want to consider your snow stats. They will definitely be changing. The GSB snow dance will be taking place sometime really soon 😉 BTW, I spread the snow around to all the cities. Well excluding Buffalo of course, lol.
o man the buffalo snow dance worked. they got several inches today and they will probably be the big winners for fridays storm.General, next time you do a snow dance do it for all of CNY…you can still make buffalo be the big winner, but share the wealth a little. it looks like fridays storm will be mostly ice in Albany with a 70/30 ice to snow split in binghamton and syracuse, probably 50/50 in the rock, and probably 20/80 in buffalo; that is the 1st number is percent of precip that is going to be ice and 2nd number percent that will be snow. so id go .5 inches of snow in Albany, 5 inches in bingo, 6 inches in syracuse, 9 inches in rochester and maybe 12 or more for buffalo. these are preliminary numbers and are subject to change.