October Storm, Redux

Earlier this week, in a preview of this Sunday's game between the Bills and Jets, a NY Daily News columnist wrote, "..the weather in Buffalo is never good."  While it would be easy to point out to Mr. Bondy that it's 60 degrees and sunny here on November 3rd, the truth is our bad-weather reputation is at least somewhat based on past events, and we know all too well what some of our Northeastern neighbors are currently going through.



Photo Courtesy www.ct.gov



A weekend Nor'easter dumped record amounts of snowfall for October in parts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, New Jersey and Maine, collapsing trees and branches that had not yet shed their leaves.  Over three million homes and business lost power, and officials say the power may not be restored until this weekend in some areas.

All of this should sound eerily familiar to Western New Yorkers.  We lived through the same thing five years ago during our own October Surprise storm, so it's no surprise that Western New Yorkers are stepping up to help this time around.
Almost 3,700 people spent Tuesday night in Red Cross shelters.  Tuesday morning, volunteer Steven Schwartz of Buffalo deployed to Connecticut to assist in those relief efforts.  This is Steven's second disaster deployment of 2011--he took part in the tornado relief efforts in Alabama this spring. 


As we saw a couple months ago, when over three dozen local Red Cross volunteers deployed to assist in the Hurricane Irene/Tropical Storm Lee response, more Western New Yorkers will be ready to join Steven if called upon after this October Surprise sequel.  We certainly have experience with this sort of thing!