December in Buffalo

Here where I reside, a dusting of newly-fallen snow adorns the ground. Other locales in Western New York, however, received quite a bit more in the last day or so -- six inches or a bit more. That's the thing about living here in early Winter: you're at the mercy of whichever way the winds are blowing off Lake Erie. It's not uncommon -- in fact, it's actually extremely common -- for one person in Buffalo to receive barely any snow, while another just five miles north or five miles south picks up five inches.

And of course, folks are acting surprised at the snowfall: "I woke up this morning to six inches!" Well, it's December in Buffalo, folks! This is like someone in Phoenix in July saying, "Man, I've gotta run the A/C twenty-four-seven!".

This marks the second winter since the one we spent in Syracuse. Now that was a winter: something like four feet more total snow than Buffalo received that year; TV weathermen offering helpful forecasts like "We could receive four to eighteen inches of snow"; and ice ice everywhere from October to April. Yeesh. Why Buffalo has its bad reputation is beyond me, because there's a much worse place to spend a winter just a hundred fifty miles down I-90.