'City of Fallen Branches,' Buffalo NY USA, Breaks All-Time Record with Early Snow Storm
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 10.16.06
This is in memorial to the fallen and broken trees of Buffalo New York, USA, a community once known as the "City of Trees." Now, according to the Buffalo News:-- "Less than three weeks removed from summer's waning days, a thundering lake-effect snowstorm blitzed Buffalo Niagara on Thursday, knocking out power to more than 100,000 homes, felling large trees and creating havoc for travelers. ... Trees still carrying their autumn leaves became too heavy with snow and their branches crashed to the ground, damaging homes, cars and power lines". A report just heard on National Public Radio indicated that 'nearly every tree was damaged'. Great opportunity for denialists to offer 'So much for global warming?' type comments. But we hope they will at least consider that this is the earliest lake-effect snow ever for Buffalo and the region, certainly coming under the category of 'climatic extreme.' And climate extremes, more frequent and more intense storms, for example, are what climate change is all about.
=== update below the fold
The deciduous trees native to Buffalo NY evolved to lose their leaves before the the full onslaught of winter. It is the presence of full leaf cover which made the impact of sticky snow so high. Assume we had no access to meteorological records: this occurance would still appear 'un-natural' in scope, using only the benchmark of climatically driven growth seasons as a reference point.
National media coverage of this Buffalo-area storm failed to convey this point (no surprise), in spite of the fact that it is essential to understanding the potential ecosystem response to climate change. The follow-on impacts could be more signficant than property loss. Examples: native species of encephalitis carrying mosquitoes live in the rain-water holding cavities that result from branches breaking at the main stem of a tree. Several years after a storm like this, an outbreak of encephalitis may result; and a string of early snow storms such as this could lead to devastation of urban tree stands and completely change the character of city parks and streets.
I can tell you the damage is immense, strain is heavy, and I am only more certain I have to do more green things to counter anything like this happening in the future.
My Sylvania Dot LEDs gave as light and allowed us to bail water into the endless hours of the morning and through. As well as many other duties of lighting and guiding.
My solar Panels gave us the ability to recharge cell phones. For emergency calling, and just helping us keep our sanity (for those that need that stuff. I never got one.)
But a question remains what to do with all these tree branches? I've been trying to make them into firewood. Give them some use... But I'm not sure.
Sincerely
=== author's response follows =====
Fire wood will be perish in just a few years unless kept dry. Job #1 then is to build wood storage sheds out of the scrap wood originating from building demolitino. Job #2 is to find the nearest biomass burning electricity generating boilers and try to arrang a supply contract via the city parks dept.
As I waited out the night in the city of Buffalo, listening to the limbs on the trees crack and the transformers exploding, I was very aware of the fact that this extreme weather was probably caused by global warming. It is no exageration that every tree was seriously damaged, the very trees that we depend on to clean our air and provide the majestic connection to nature that is so important to people living in the city.
I sat in the dark along with 400,000 other households and was also reminded of how vulnerable we are to the ancient power grid.
I saw the recent Friday the 13th scare. It would have been prudent to add the scare, we the Western New York [WNY] inhabitants (people of Buffalo and Suburbs, and Rochester, as well as some of the Southern tier of New York.) were very much living.
It is very much not over yet. I'm at work; though many of my co-workers still have no energy at home.
Every day I still go on a run., and view the destruction. We are coming back, but how soon? How much more damage will all the new cables and such going to cost the environment?
Should we lay the lines underground so that we don't face such a thing again?
More micro or hybrid generation?
I will fight the good fight. I'm not going to just die in the night with no fight. I will be quiet my footprint will be small. This is not just physical, but also in the carbon sense.
It is a nauseating site. Buffalo's 100 year old, treelined, Frederick Law Olmsted designed, parkways and boulevards have been reduced to a Hiroshima movie set. From the city core, to 3rd ring suburbs, out past the county line... fully mature 30ft trees have been massacred down to 18ft trunks, split down the middle, or been uprooted all together.
The article above touches on a very important point... that the national media saw it as another "ha-ha, good old Buffalo" snow storm. Not that 389,000 people lost power, that this has never happened before–ever, and that the City of Trees has seen a dark day.
The trees that do survive this will have a tough few years ahead to get back to health. I imagine many won't make it.
Buffalo, a Northeastern, former RustBelt city, that fights for every nickel of federal and state funding will be hard pressed to find money to aid the existing trees and plant new ones. Are there any grants or aid avaiable for something like this? Maybe there can be a largescale rock concert or funding drive to help.
The view is heartbreaking.
As a resident of Ontario, Canada, I was saddened and alarmed by the disaster that befell our neighbours to the South. Here's hoping that they recover quickly, and manage to save as many of those trees as possible.
There was a very odd-looking Jet Stream on the day of the storm, October 13, 2006. Usually, the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream is a wavy line circling the entire globe. But Environment Canada's chart October 13, 2006 was showing a circle of Jet Stream surrounding just the Province of Ontario. The Jet Stream seemed to pass right over Upstate New York, where Buffalo is located!
Is this a taste of Jet Stream anomalies to come, as global warming intensifies?
Check out the Jet Stream map and discussion on our Blog at http://climatechangecdn.blogspot.com/2006/10/jet-stream-extreme-severe-winter-storm.html
It has been almost two years since The Storm hit Buffalo. I remember where I was when it started. I was in English, last period of the day. It started to snow, everyone in my class, including me, was excited.
When I got home, my brothers and I went outside to play in the snow. We were having a snowball fight when we heard a CRRAAACK! We didn't know what it was. We thought it was thunder. We decided to go inside.
We stayed inside all night, then we found out what the noise was; it was a branch that had broke off the tree under the weight of the snow. My dad and I went out later that night to try and save some trees. The snow was at least 3-4 feet deep. We shook snow off branches and did all we could, but it wasn't enough. Even as snow came off the branches, more snow went on top. After being outside for a long time, we went in. I woke up the next morning and thought I was in a dream, everywhere I looked all I saw were broken branches and damaged trees.
Tyler, and I went out into buffalo on our bikes. I was armed with a camera and couldn't believe what I saw; all the trees had broken limbs and downed branches. We rode all around the city and saw the same thing. The trees were broken, damaged beyond imagination. My neighborhood got lucky, while houses around us had lost power, we had power. The city of trees, one of buffalo's many nicknames, could maybe no longer be one. We had another one, The City of Good Neighbors. This one definitely fit, we helped each other clear the damage and consul each other.
My grandma’s house in the suburbs had lost power, so she came and stayed with us. I gave up my room and slept on the living room floor in a sleeping bag. We lived this way for almost a week. When my grandma's house lost power, the sump pump's battery started up. After the battery went dead, she had basement flooding. My uncle, cousin, dad and I went and got the water out. It was hard work. When she got her power back on, we were all very happy. I said "Now we can watch the Sabres game." I was wrong, we didn't know this but the branches had also knocked out her cable.
The hardest part was seeing what the storm did to the tree in front of my old school . There was a special tree in front of the school, in those pictures all that was left was the stump. It was disheartening to see this. For me and my brother, staying home all that time was starting to become boring, we wanted to go back to school. Even after being in school and trading stories, Buffalo was never the same. This was my second destructive winter storm that I have lived through. I was 14 when this storm took place. Nothing will be as destructive and heartbreaking as the October Storm. And the strange coincidence is that the October Storm happened on Friday the 13th or Black Friday.
And what is scary is that the trees still carry scars from that storm. Buffalo and Erie County were forever changed.