Three Feet of Snow...

[nystate]

The Associated Press
1/23/04 1:48 PM


FULTON, N.Y. (AP) -- Business was almost at a standstill Friday at Mimi's Drive Inn -- like just about everything else in this city on Lake Ontario's eastern shore after unrelenting lake-effect squalls churned out nearly three feet of snow in a 24-hour period.

"There's nobody out except the plow drivers," said restaurant owner Chris Sachel, who said his business was off by about 90 percent from a typical morning.

"Heck, it takes two or three hours just to dig your car out of the driveway. It's a real procedure," Sachel said. "I have a four-wheel drive and I still got stuck two or three times just getting out of my driveway."

While lake-effect snow fell on the lake's bordering counties all the way west to Niagara County, it was heaviest in Fulton, where Mayor Daryl Hayden declared a snow emergency and police were advising against any unnecessary travel.

"During the night sometime it started coming down so hard you couldn't see across the road. It just got worse and worse ... until it was time to call it a snow emergency," Hayden said.

The National Weather Service said Fulton received 32.5 inches over a 24-hour period ending 7 a.m Friday. The squalls weakened later Friday and shifted south but continued to produce periodic bursts.

Hayden said at one point he had every department in the city working toward getting the snow off the streets in an effort to get the city up-and-running again. The mayor said he hoped to be able to lift the snow emergency later Friday.

Joe Pace, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Buffalo, said the heavier-than-usual squalls resulted from a rare triple whammy as the arctic winds blew down from Canada across Lake Superior, Lake Huron and then Lake Ontario before finally jettisoning the moisture as snow across northern New York.

"It's was an unusual alignment that usually happens just a few times a winter. But when it does, watch out," Pace said.

Other parts of Oswego County were spared the knockout punch delivered to Fulton but snow totals were still between 12 and 24 inches across the area, he said.

In Oswego, city officials also issued a travel advisory and banned on-street parking so snowplows could get through to clear the roads. Oswego city schools closed for a seventh time this winter.

Municipal offices also were closed in Sterling, Volney and in Granby, where blustery winds knocked out power for seven hours to about 1,700 customers. Many businesses shut down for the day and community and civic organizations canceled events.

In Syracuse, which expected to receive 5 to 10 inches of snow Friday, the city edged over the 100-inch mark for the season -- and could even reach its annual average of 115 inches before the weekend was over.

In Rochester, the city on Thursday tied a record with its 19th consecutive day of measurable snowfall, Pace said. Friday's forecast was for another four to seven inches, which would break the record set between Jan. 11 and Jan. 29, 1985.

During its current 19-day streak, Rochester has received 41.4 inches.

"We're paying for the mild November and December we had," Pace said.

The daily deluge of snow hasn't bothered Gail Shears, 54, of Fairport. She welcomes it and lets everybody know her feelings when she drives her Subaru with LOVESNOW license plates.

"I get annoyed with the weatherman when he says we have terrible weather with snow coming," she told The Democrat & Chronicle of Rochester. "You don't have to worry about bugs or rashes or allergies. It's so pretty when you have snow covering everything."

[Anonymous]

Tell them up there, if they're tired of shoveling snow, that I'll come up and show 'em how to shovel their beleaguered town out of that 3 feet of snow.

They don't call me The Digger for nothin'.




-JEB

[Lehigh]

Hey Jed,

It's time to move northward.

You love that snow.