Buffalo gets a lot more snow than New York City does, especially the "lake effect" snow that buries the city in the late fall and early spring.
The problem is that the New York City metro area has a population that is nearly 20 times larger than Buffalo's (about 20 million vs. 1.1 million). If you put 20 million people in Buffalo a snowstorm would be a complete disaster.
If Buffalo had that kind of population the whole political structure of the State would flip. No longer would the downstate liberals be able to rape the upstate tax base to fund their socialist agenda. Buffalo, in that case, would have a snow removal force that would rival the size of the army of a medium size developed country.