Erie gets record snowfall during Christmas blizzard

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | December 26, 2017

[EdnaMode]

The good news for many in the Northeast and Midwest was that it was a white Christmas. The bad news was that a blizzard swept into parts of New England and bitter cold enveloped much of the Midwest.

Erie, Pa., recieved a record 34 inches of snow.

NWS Cleveland ✔ @NWSCLE Erie, PA received 34" of snow on Christmas Day! This is a new all-time daily snowfall record. The previous record was 20" set on 11/22/56. For reference, the greatest 3-day snowfall in Erie was 30.2" (12/29-31/2002), greatest 7-day snowfall is 39.8" (12/27/01-1/2/2002) #pawx 1:26 AM - Dec 26, 2017

And another 19 inches fell before dawn Tuesday, bringing the total to 53 inches — the greatest two-day total in commonwealth history. The previous record was the 44 inches that fell in Morgantown in March 1958.

And it’s not over for Erie - the snow is expected to continue falling through Wednesday. The city of Erie issued a snow emergency, citing “dangerous and impassable” roads, and asked residents to stay off city streets until the snow stops and roads can reopen.

State police and the Department of Transportation are urging people to avoid travel, citing poor visibility and deteriorating conditions.

[Mark17]

It was 81 degrees here today, which is not bad, considering how far south I am. 😀😆😁👍

[trebb]

The storm of ‘66 - remember watching out the picture window with the garage spotlights on - could actually see the drifts outside the window growing and changing shape. Could walk right up a drift and onto the roof of the school next door - my little brother got trapped in a hole where the heat from a janitor door melted a perfect square chute the, width of the door, to the ground - his friend came running and hollering and I went over and had to pull him out. Those were the days........

[trebb]

Depends on where one is - some “alleys” prone to lots of snow and others not so much - foothills of the mountains help route it around some areas. Been through the big ones that ran through the Buffalo/Rochester area and some were really impressive even to those “used to” such.

[trebb]

Funny how some of the tough times can actually trigger some of the best memories.....especially if one was young enough to have a sense of wonder about the outre` events...

[Tammy8]

I don’t think we are having bigger weather events, I do think we hear more about them. Only occasionally is an event truly a record breaker, and that is normal too to have an occasional record breaking event.

Everywhere I have lived there are weather cycles that are local to that area and you can actually learn them if you talk to old timers and pay attention to weather. Areas have cycles of dry and wet that fall on a fairly predictable pattern. Living in the Southwest if you understand El Nino and La Nina it is very helpful. Of course understanding is relative, no one can predict weather with real accuracy. You can have an idea that a year will tend to be wet or dry, but not whether a wet year will get the moisture all at once or spread out.

Liberals want to control everything so they hype the weather to fit an agenda. The late 1960s had a lot of famous blizzards and snowfalls so they jumped on the idea that an ice age was right around the corner. Recently they got hung up on global warming and tried to make every event an example.

When they realized those puzzle pieces were not fitting now it is climate change, which the climate has always changed. A real tell is that if there is an event that fits their claims they hype the heck out of it as evidence. If an event goes against their agenda then they lecture on the difference between weather and climate.

Yes we do have odd weather, the earth has always had odd weather.

[Tammy8]

That is true, I have great memories of that snow, though it was tough at the time. We did have an outstanding tubing run on a hill behind our house. Lots of fun, lots of work, it was amazing. The newspaper in Flagstaff just did an article on the 50th anniversary and those of us that were in the area when it happened had quite a gathering on the comments. I have friends on Facebook that were there at the ranch with me, an event that we have in common that few others do. My dad had a saying that what didn’t kill you made you tougher.

[imardmd1]

I'm not wishing you a White Christmas, but I hope you can get a chance to go ice skating again before this year of 2017 deflate, gets folded up, and stored away in the "Old Memories" closet. May your Christmas time be blessed, and I pray that the coming year will be the best ever for you, Bro.

It's sunny here in Delaware, and though without snow, still hovering around freezing. We had an uptick last Saturday to the mid-50s (degF), and though we were having intermittent rain, I got to work on my old Ford Crown Vic Interceptor engine for about 3 or 4 hours. Got a coolant leak hopefully stopped, and replaced the cylinder 4 (4.6L V8) spark plug replaced.

Good to hear from you, my man. Salud!

[imardmd1]

Been through the big ones that ran through the Buffalo/Rochester area and some were really impressive even to those “used to” such.

Yeah. In the 1940s, I lived in Allegany County in the Southern Tier, bordering PA. There and in those years two-foot snow was expected in the winter. In 1944 we had 4-foot snow everywhere, not merely sporadic drifts, but total coverage over the whole county. It was a bad time for the troops that faced the Battle of the Bulge in the ETO, from December through February. No "global-warming effect then. In Western New York, sledding was a normally expected months-long experience, with snow from deer-hunting season in mid-November until spring broke about the Ides of March.

From 1948 until 1954 my home was in Monroe County, Honeoye Falls south of Rochester. I really had to bundle up to walk my 96-customer paper route each winter morning. No bike-riding then, for that four-mile walk every weekday. Sure made one fit for sports. Winters are much easier now than at that time 65 years ago. I made extra money shoveling walks around the neighborhood. Of course, doing our own was my expected chore, not Dad's.

In the mid-60s I worked for the Pfaudler Company in Rochester and was a member of the Gates-Chili Volunteer Fire Company. I think it was 1966 or '67 that we had activity-stopping eaves-high snow drifts. In one instance, our emergency vehicle team was able to get a woman in childbirth labor through 20-foot drifts to the hospital in the city itself, before the new babe arrived.

At another time in the 1970s, my parents lived in Buffalo. One winter the whole city was shut down because of the Lake Erie eastern-shore snow dumping that caused impassable drifting. The land bridge between the US and Canada above Niagara Falls, that separates Lake Erie shores and the western part of Lake Ontario, escaped the whole snow-dump effect. Lewiston and Youngstown only had a few inches.

In the '80s I worked in Niagara Falls at Dupont, and lived 20 miles north of it just below Youngstown. I had to take a business trip to California to see customers. On the day I left for that trip in early March, I cleared my sidewalk of three-foot-deep snow in the morning. By 10 AM EDT I left the Buffalo Airport in a non-stop flight to San Diego, had a 5-hour in-flight nap, and by 1:30 PM Pacific time I was cruising down the street to my Sheraton Bar Harbor Island hotel with the rental Chrysler convertible top down, enjoying the high-70s breeze. Spent the afternoon at the outdoors pool. What a life! All in the same day!

[gunsequalfreedom]

Did you ever hear about the haunted stretch of I-90 between Erie and Buffalo?

[trebb]

Wow - brought back some memories. Started in the city of Rochester from '52 - '62 - mostly on Brown Street just down the road from Bull's head plaza (Kresge's/Woolworth's and some other stores) and we would bike to Genesee Valley park to swim and "explore".

Moved to Henrietta (Monroe County) in '62. Got to know all the towns in the area very well as a teenage terror behind the wheel and had a girlfriend who started out in Gates-Chili and ended up out by Sodus Point to the far NE of the city - made for some interesting rides during bad weather in the Winter).

Last time I was back was a few years ago when my Mom passed and still have a brother out in Victor but there's no other remnants of the family in the area.

[trebb]

Don’t recall hearing about it - Buffalo was generally the western boundary of my travels - except for trips to ‘see the falls” - family had plenty of haunted stories about the general area though - weird clan; most of them were personal stories.....

[imardmd1]

mostly on Brown Street just down the road from Bull's head plaza

Holy Cow!

I graduated from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 1963 (finished in '62 fall semester) and moved my little family to Rochester to take up my first engineering job with the Pfaudler Company out on West Avenue. While waiting for my new house to be built in the Town of Chili just off Fisher Road, I rented a house on Magnolia Street which was only a few blocks down from the Bulls Head juncture of Genesee T., West Main St. (Chili Rd.), West Avenue (Rte 33, Buffalo Rd.), and Brown Street at St. Mary's Hospital.

I guess you must have been about ten years younger. I lived in Chili for four years. While in the Gates-Chili Fire Dept., with them I fought the fire when the amusement park totally burned down on the July Fourth holiday of (I'm pretty sure) 1965. Was also in the fire company when we were on call to fill in for city companies water-cannon battling the city renegade population during the riots of 1964 (that really were being rehearsed in 1963 when I lived on Magnolia, which ran between Genesee and Plymouth). Then in (I think) the winter of '65-'66 was the huge snowstorm. About the same time frame, we went into Greece on reserve when their Main Street block of stores burned up. Exciting days, those.

For the last years with Pfaudler, I worked at the Research complex on Lehigh Station Road that ran between Route 15A (West Henrietta) and E. Henrietta Rd that goes out to Rush and therefrom to Honeoye Falls and Lima); winding up at Clover Street, Honeoye Falls' other route to Rochester and East Avenue.

What I remember most about the Gates-Chili Fire Department is going down to the Company 1 Fire Hall on Saturday mornings to soak up Genesee Cream Ale (Golden Nectar) splits and play euchre while waiting for a call.

(Couldn't find a picture of the 6-oz splits.) Of course, after two splits, we were barred from riding a truck on a call--OK in the winter, but not in the summer when we were fighting grass fires that arose from people burning their trash (no more of that now, you bet, with Environmental breathing down everybody's neck). Some weekends every company was out and with Indian pumps as well as the reel hoses using the truck tank water.

The most memorable--after the amusement park fire--was (with another fireman) holding down the nozzle bore of a 2 1/2" hose in two-foot deep snow while fighting a raging barn fire. We learned later that we kept the fire from reaching the tanks of an oxyacetylene gas welding rig. Whooee!

But thanks for bringing back a flood of forgotten memories from fifty years ago!

I suppose Mississippi is quite a long way from the terminus of the Genesee River, both in distance and in culture. You remember the story of the fish that was a cross between Cohoes salmon, wall-eye pike, and muskellunge to survive the contaminated outflux of the Genesee River into Lake Ontario? The one called "Kowalski" (although not every one could be taught to swim)?

Cheers, my Empire-State-born FRiend!

[trebb]

Thanks for the memories - Before Brown Street, I lived on Lloyd street which was a short street that ran between Flint and Shelter streets - if I recall right, Magnolia was the next little street over and Shelter Street was laid brick for a number of years before they paved over it.

Was born in St. Mary's (1952) and started school at St. Monica's.

During the riots of 64, a number of former neighbors had taken the bait and were no longer friendly - the area around Lloyd Street had went from White - Mixed to mainly Black and they were actual families and took care of their houses during the '50s and into the early '60s. Was in the car with my great uncle coming down Flint when a mob ahead released the car they had been rocking to try to turn it over and turned their eyes on us. my uncle let the other car get away to make room and hollered for them to try to stop them before putting the hammer down - one idiot waited too long and bounced off the front left fender but did manage to not take a frontal hit.....

That year was the turning point where Blacks went from heavy integration into society and became what so many are today....sad.