With winter comes snow. It's unavoidable if you're living on the East Coast: summers may be great for the beach, but the winters are absolutely brutal. That being said, most of the really bad stuff - storms that dump a ridiculous amount of snow onto your driveway - doesn't usually hit until later in the season. December and January are supposed to be the bad months, when everyone is inside celebrating Christmas and New Year's Eve.
For 2014, that simply isn't the case. The big storms have come early this year, and while many cities are suffering from an early beating, there's no city that's been hit worse than Buffalo, New York. In some areas, there was nearly 70 inches of snowfall - that's almost six feet of snow all at once. It's a ridiculous amount on its own, but for this early in the year, it's the sort of storm that takes everyone by surprise.
Thanks to Twitter, everyone can see firsthand what such a storm looks like. At first glance, it doesn't look all that bad:
RT @spurbs. Just east of Buffalo. Note the fence is 6 feet high. #LakeEffect #BuffaloSnow #nywx. pic.twitter.com/uakNHvFyJf — NWS Binghamton (@NWSBinghamton) November 19, 2014
...it's got that smooth, almost fluffy look to it...until you realize that the fence in the background is six feet tall and only the top three inches are actually visible. That's horrifying. It only gets worse from there. This seriously looks like the something out of a Roland Emmerich movie:
Wall of snow seen from the air over Buffalo, courtesy @JamesAFry. See more photos: https://t.co/jeo2QjJ2Ha pic.twitter.com/xqCRUThUFU — CBS News (@CBSNews) November 19, 2014
If you were lucky enough to be inside when the storm hit, that only meant you would be trapped in your home for the next few days:
Honestly, not sure where one would even begin? #buffalosnow pic.twitter.com/6L2QTNGclh — Jeff Verszyla (@Verz) November 19, 2014
The people who were out and about when the snow hit were even worse off. The storm hit so hard and so suddenly that, if your car wasn't completely buried in the snow:
Smh pic.twitter.com/g4NfQFhceP
— Deon Broomfield (@iBroomy) November 18, 2014
Then there was a good chance that you would have to outright abandon it. Buffalo highways were littered with cars that were left behind, either for fear of the conditions or because they simply wouldn't run anymore:
Another view of stranded cars and tractor trailers on I 90 highway. #BuffaloSnow #nywx pic.twitter.com/N4TT1Y6mgN — DR (@Media371) November 19, 2014
Even a Buffalo Fire Department truck was left out in the cold:
Buffalo Fire Department Engine 4 stuck and abandoned on Abbott Road in South Buffalo. #BuffaloSnow #nywx pic.twitter.com/1Ki5PLa1aP — DR (@Media371) November 19, 2014
Hopefully, the residents of Buffalo get a few warm days this week. Thankfully, it's early enough in the season that warmer weather is at least still a possibility; if something like this had happened in February, the snow could have easily frozen over and made a bad situation even worse.
If you happen to live in Buffalo: stay inside and hope the snow melts. There's no point in driving to work if there's a good chance you'll end up going off the road.
Plus, there are some clever ways to take advantage of all this snow...
Resilient Buffalonians, making the best of a difficult situation. #snowvember #BuffaloSnow pic.twitter.com/nW9HWsjWF1 — Gil Meslin (@g_meslin) November 19, 2014