The Tug Hill Plateau is east of Lake Ontario. It is known as the snowiest part of the state, with snow falling in hundreds of inches in a year.
Not my picture.
Huh, how timely! My brother just sent me a link to a video about the great Syracuse blizzard of 1966 - I believe the one I was referring to earlier. http://youtu.be/UKw4CdZFmBE [For those unfamiliar with the area, Syracuse is the largest city in the area, a little south of Tug Hill.]
Wow! I watched the video and it's truly amazing what those guys did back then, and all in a days work too. Over here in England we get the plows out if there's 5"! We really can't cope with the slightest fall here. They even close the schools when there's just a few inches. I remember walking to school if we couldn't drive but now they don't bother. People have all gotten soft over here!
You might want to look at this video, "Plowing Tug Hill in 1939" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TZR2WbD3Hz0) It shows the technique they used to clear roads, and the "new" plows and super-truck which drove it. In places where the snow was too deep for the truck driver to see, a "shovel man" would walk ahead on the snow, gauge the middle of the road, and stand his shovel up for the truck driver to aim at.
You are so very correct, Dondi. Every time you look at a weather map in the winter, the Tug Hill is being hit with lake effect snow. There are few small towns there, and most make their living from snowmobilers and cross country skiers in the winter. In the winter of 1976-1977, the plateau had a total accumulation of 466.9 inches of snow ? approximately 39 feet (almost 12 meters). How can we even image that much snow???? A very close friend of mine grew up in Boonville....and my sister student taught there. (She wasn't happy!)
When the wind is from the west, the moisture-laden air comes off the great lakes and rises over the cooler land. The result is snow, and a lot of it. Nowadays, you can see "lake effect" snow, getting lighter with distance, on the radar, extending all the way east of the Adirondacks.
Back in January 1966, when I was in Ithaca (at Cornell), we had a 34" snowfall, after close to 14" the week before. At that time, I heard that on the Tug Hill Plateau they had 108" (9 feet) of standing snow, and 20-foot drifts! They were supplying outlying houses and farms through second-story windows using helicopters and snowmobiles. That is indeed a lot of snow.
As to the people being used to it? If you look at the map, you'll notice that that area is hardly populated, and the towns that are there (Lowville is the largest, I think) are small and sparse.
You are SO RIGHT Ebkrueg!!! :) Yes, gntlaura and shirley....that's a lot of snow. The folks who live there are used to it. I imagine they enjoy the beauty of it, madpol, or would move elsewhere. :)
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