Upstate N.Y. digs out after big storm shuts down major highway

[Donna]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/02/new.york.snow/index.html?hpt=T2 They got hit hard

sent by Dawn Villela

[Bobbie Ireland]

Sounds like Ireland! But haha, I am all nice and toasty inside - those poor unfortunates on the Thruway have my sympathy... but... were they told NOT to travel??? Oh dear...

[birdmusic]

No, they weren't told not to travel at that point.  The problem was all the jack-knifed trailers that blocked the road because the storm started out as rain which froze and iced the roads. Then it started snowing on top of that.  The snow piled up around everyone while they were blocked and then no one could move.

birdmusic - safely 15 minutes north of Buffalo with NO snow!

[anneintoronto]

Poor Buffalo!  That city is a snow magnet, sitting at the end of Lake Erie!  I remember one year, I was listening to the radio in the middle of the night and, while searching through the stations, came across one in Buffalo and all sorts of people were phoning in to tell of their adventures, their calamities...  It was only October and a lot of the leaves were still on the trees and the weight of the massive wet snow, was breaking branches, bringing down whole trees and wires and cables with them.  It was just a horrible night!!  But people never fail to come through in the most awful predicaments, including a very old woman, on a walker, who made it to the house next door, through all that unshovelled snow, to deliver warm milk, soup, homemade bread (turned out she had a functioning gas stove) to a young single mom, she was worried about!  Ah, the milk of human kindness!  That last, amazing story took me into a good night's sleep, probably with snowstorms and wonderful people blowing through my dream!  Hang in there Buffalo!!

Anne in dry, sunny, but cold Toronto

[birdmusic]

It was only October and a lot of the leaves were still on the trees and the weight of the massive wet snow, was breaking branches, bringing down whole trees and wires and cables with them.  It was just a horrible night!! 
Anne in dry, sunny, but cold Toronto

Ah yes - our October Surprise.   
Otherwise know as "Arborgeddon" because of all the trees that were lost.