Don Paul, Buffalo Meteorologist:
Well, I don't think anyone has the answer right now, because the Blizzard of '77, which was a ground blizzard — that was almost entirely windblown snow — was not well-forecast.
It wasn't a total surprise, but people were unprepared. This storm had days of advanced warning, not just from someone like me, but certainly from the National Weather Service. And we assumed fewer people would try to venture out into it.
And Buffalo is known for being able to handle snow. But there's a certain mythology there, John. The city has fewer plows per capita than a city that gets less snow, like where I grew up in the New York area. And the New York Sanitation Department, per capita, has far more plows.
And then you have so many abandoned cars where these plows here, as in other cities, simply cannot get down the street. But, apparently, one of the biggest problems has been so many people wandered out and got into their cars, as well as pedestrians, who faced the worst possible result in just the most brutal conditions I have personally experienced in my rather long life.
I have never seen anything quite like it. And as bad as it was here at my house, it was worse in Buffalo.
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