N.Y. Snowfall Hits 100 Inches
More Snow Is Forecast For Weekend As Oswego County Declared Disaster Area
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Dave Chase, left, and Ken Capstraw clear snow from a roof in Parish, N.Y., Feb. 10, 2007. (AP Photo/David Duprey)
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Joe Lynch shovels snow of the sidewalk in the city of Oswego, N.Y., Thursday, Feb 8, 2007. (AP/The Post-Standard, Dennis Nett)
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Chris Harra clears snow from a roof in Mexico, N.Y., Friday, Feb. 9, 2007. Five straight days of lake-effect squalls have dumped 100 inches of snow, and even more was forecast through the weekend. (AP Photo/David Duprey)
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Michael McCullagh is shown with a face full of icy snow after clearing snow from the parking lot of the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Oswego County in Mexico, N.Y., Feb. 7, 2007. Since Sunday, the small towns of Parish and Mexico have recorded more than six feet of snow, and forecasters with the National Weather Service say another two feet or more of heavy lake effect snow was expected Thursday. (AP/The Post-Standard, C.W. Mckeen)
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David Farmer, owner of "Dave-Did-It-Construction", shovels the roof of Mowry and Mowry, Attorneys at Law, along Main Street in downtown Mexico, N.Y., Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 7, 2007. (AP/The Post Standard, Jeff Fehder)
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"The sun's out, but it isn't going to last," Mike Avery said as he took a brief break from loading dump trucks with snow to be taken to a pile outside town.
The National Weather Service said the bands of lake-effect snow fed by moisture from Lake Ontario would continue weaving up and down the lake's eastern shore during the weekend, dropping 2 to 4 more feet of snow with wind of up to 25 mph.
"It's all we need," Avery said, his tractor dwarfed by the snowbank he was trying to dismantle. "It's getting monotonous."
Parish — about 25 miles northeast of Syracuse — reached a milestone early Saturday with 100 inches of snow over the past seven days, the National Weather Service said. Unofficial reports pegged totals at 123 inches in Orwell and 122 in Redfield, but the weather service said those numbers include snow from another storm a couple of days before the current weather system arrived last Sunday. All three towns are in Oswego County.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer declared a state disaster emergency for the county Thursday, authorizing all state agencies to help assist municipalities and residents in the storm-wracked region along eastern Lake Ontario.
More than a week of bitter cold and slippery roads have contributed to at least 20 deaths across the northeastern quarter of the nation — five in Ohio, four in Illinois, four in Indiana, two in Kentucky, two in Michigan, and one each in Wisconsin, New York and Maryland, authorities said. No deaths were reported in Oswego County, but just this week six people in the county have had fingers amputated because of accidents involving snowblowers, reports CBS affiliate WTVH correspondent Donna Adamo.
It's been an exhausting week in Oswego County.
"This is right up there with the best of them, almost as bad as the Blizzard of '66. But there ain't nothing good about this much snow," Ray DeLong grumbled as his snowblower clogged and stalled on Friday in nearby Mexico.
While the volume of snow isn't unusual for the area, the short time in which it fell was. Mexico residents see 5- to 6-foot snowfalls every two or three years, but even hardened locals are amazed at the scenes before them now: parked SUVs noticeable only because their antennas or roof racks stand above the snow's surface; front doors buried, with footprints leading to second-story windows; 6-foot-thick slabs of snow that have slid off roofs, forming colossal arches as they stretch intact to the ground.
Sidewalks look like miniature canyons.
Mark Kelcinski's son spent two hours Friday with a shovel and snowblower in front of the family's graphics design shop, carving a path through the snowbank to the street. They have done the same thing each day for five days.
"That's all we do, is shovel and snowblow all day long," said Kelcinski. "You go home and then come in and do the same thing again the next day."
The state transportation department said 125 workers from elsewhere in the state had been sent in with snow equipment to help.
The region is located along the Tug Hill Plateau, the snowiest region this side of the Rocky Mountains. It's a 50-mile wedge of land that rises 2,100 feet from the eastern shore of Lake Ontario and catches the snow-laden winter wind blowing off the lake. It usually gets about 300 inches — roughly 25 feet — of snow a year.
The hamlet of Hooker, near the boundaries of Jefferson, Lewis, and Oswego counties, holds the state record for snowfall in a year — 466.9 inches, about 39 feet, in the winter of 1976-77. It sits right next to the hamlet of Montague, which got 77 inches in a 24-hour period in January 1997.
But all is not black: Local businessmen are looking forward to an anticipated boom in snowmobilers expected to come take advantage of the snow-laden vistas.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
- How about that Global Warming thing?
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- The real question is what will happen to the Hudson (and NYC) once the snow melts, and of how quickly the melt will happen...
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- COOL weather info George2221
cafepress.com/warisprofitable - Reply to this comment
