Lake Effect Life

Posted On December 27, 2022

Surviving a Christmas Blizzard

North Country Style

A Lake Effect Snowstorm Flashback

          I’m a north country boy. I’ve lived here all my life. I grew up in Saranac Lake, served my country with 10^th Mountain at Fort Drum, where I met and married my wife. We bought our house and raised our family here in Watertown.

     Saranac Lake and Watertown, New York. The two places I’ve lived nearly all of my life. On any given day, one or the other is either the coldest or snowiest spot in the lower 48. I hear stories about folks who live in places where it’s snow free and warm. Are they true? Or just myths and rumors?  I’m a north country boy. I would not know.

     I sometimes read articles debating questions like:

“Where exactly is the north country?”

“What is the dividing line between “upstate” and “the north country”?”

“Where does the north country begin?”

     My answer to all of those questions is simple:

Folks who live in the north country don’t have to ask.

They just know it.

     Which brings me to the term “Lake Effect”.

 There is no way that folks who have never experienced it can truly appreciate or understand it.

     My best friend Chuck and I went to Cornell together. He lives in Horseheads.  Horseheads is in New York State. They get winter weather. They get snowstorms. But they don’t get “lake effect” snowstorms. Chuck learned what I meant by lake effect the hard way.

     One winter’s day he was planning to travel to Watertown, driving up I81. His son had a hockey game, in Pulaski I think, or maybe Sackets Harbor. Either way, he and his family were going to stop for a visit at our home here in Watertown.

     I asked Chuck as he left. “You guys got any weather?”    He found that an odd phraseology. “Weather?”  Somewhere this side of Central Square, he ran into a lake effect snow squall on I81 and quickly discovered exactly what I meant.  He still tells that story. I still nod and chuckle.

      I remember the Blizzard of ’77.  I still lived in Saranac Lake. Cars drove around with orange bicycle flags on their radio antennas, so they were visible over the tops of the snowbanks.

     I remember driving with my father on I81 during lake effect snowstorms, back and forth to college while I was at Cornell.  More than once we got caught in whiteouts so bad that my father had me roll down my window and look out to make sure we weren’t going off the side of the road, while Dad got us in behind a semi-truck and just followed their lights, hoping they were up high enough to still see the road.

     I learned several lake effect whiteout driving survival tricks from my father during those trips. #1: Don’t stop! Even if we were just creeping ahead, we just kept going so we would not get rear ended or roadside stranded before we eventually drove out of it.

     My wife and I survived the ice storm of March 1991. We lived in an apartment on South Massey Street in Watertown. My father was visiting. My unit was just finishing a field training exercise on Fort Drum.

     We lived through the ice storm of 1998.  We had two young girls at home. My wife was pregnant with our son.  Five days into the storm’s aftermath, I was standing in the driveway cooking meat on the grill.  We were without power, but unlike many other folks, all our street’s telephone poles were still standing. We still had land line phone service. I remember standing there thinking, “Compared to some other folks, we’ve come through this storm pretty well.”

     Suddenly, I heard a cracking noise off in the distance to my right. “Crack!” “Crack!” “Carack!” It kept getting closer and louder. Then I realized! It was the power poles snapping off at their base, one by one, coming towards our house. I whisked inside just in time to watch the power pole in front of our house snap in half and pull the power, cable and phone lines from our house, mast head and all. From there forward we were without power for an additional twenty-one days. My family spent twenty-seven days total without power. Our sister-in-law brought us a generator.  We survived on that and our woodstove through the rest of the storm.

     That was also the storm where Jefferson County set up a food distribution center in one of the local beer distributor’s warehouses. I spent my days as part of a team, loading my pick-up truck with donated food items and delivering them to other families in need.

      There have been other lake effect snow ice storms along the way. Too many to count.  During some we lost power. Others we just rode out.

     Which brings me to now:

  The Lake Effect Blizzard of 2022. 

     The storm started getting local and national news coverage nearly a week ahead of time. They even gave it a name: “Winter Storm Elliott”.  When the weather people start calling a storm by name, I start paying close attention, because that’s rarely good.

     Elliott was going to collide with Christmas across the U.S.A.  A quick warm up, heavy rain, followed by dropping temps, a flash freeze, blizzard like wind conditions and heavy snow. We made plans accordingly.  I finished my Christmas shopping ahead of the storm, stocked my garage with firewood, went out back on my land and pulled all my trail cameras.

Robin and I made contingency plans to postpone family Christmas at our house. I bought two new extra snow shovels and gassed up the snowblower.

     It warmed up Thursday and began raining, as predicted. Most of our pre-existing snow had melted. By Friday morning my Christmas wrapping was done. It was raining steadily, with temperatures in the mid 40’s. My daughter Abby and her two dogs came here on Thursday to stay through the weekend so she wouldn’t get stranded alone in her apartment for Christmas.

     I had a last-minute idea for another gift for my wife. At 10 a.m. I went to Best Buy to try and find her a HALO. Best Buy did not sell HALOs, but they had something similar on a slightly smaller scale. Last minute Santas can’t be choosers, so I bought it and hustled home to finish wrapping ahead of the storm.

     Rain changed to driving snow at 11:20 a.m. The winds were gusting a gale. Snow piled up quickly. Friday afternoon my older daughter Chelsea arrived with our granddaughter Ari Rae, and her dog Graham and new puppy Princess Luna. Chelsea’s husband, Matt, was working his shift at the prison in Gouverneur. We had our fingers crossed the storm would let him get here for Christmas.

     The same for our son RJ, his fiancée Carrie, and their Corgi dog, Finley J.  Their plan was to come in from Corning on Christmas morning, weather permitting.  

     My mom and her two dogs live with us already, so there we sat: my wife and I, our dog Maizee Mae, my two daughters with 3 dogs and a puppy between them, and my granddaughter. Gale force winds rattled the windows. Snow pounded the house.

     I snowblowed the main driveway once Friday night. Foot high drifts had already formed. Wind and snow pounded my face. It was anything but pleasant.

     I got up early Saturday morning. The first thing I did, as I do every morning when it snows, was clear the dog runs. 1st rule of lake effect dog ownership: Clear the kennels and dog runs 1st, so they have a place to do their business when they get up!

Then I snowblowed the driveway again, another foot plus. I wanted to keep the driveway as clear as possible in the event that my son or son-in-law were able to make the trip. I finished up about 1pm and went inside. The snow had let up. I checked the weather radar. The lake effect snow band had shifted north. It looked like it would stay there through evening before shifting south back over us.  My son-in-law was stranded in Gouverneur for the foreseeable future, but for my son, I saw a window. I made a call. “If you are coming at all, come right now.”  

     RJ, Carrie, and Finley J. got on the road. We all tracked the lake effect storm and their progress. They had clear roads and weather on their end. Things remained clear until they got north of Central Square. The RJ called; “It’s still clear here, but I can see the line of clouds up ahead.”

     They hit snow just south of Adams.  Heavy wind and snow picked back up as the lake effect band shifted back south over Watertown. RJ & Carrie crawled in from Kellogg Hill in his four-wheel drive pick-up.  We all breathed a sigh of relief when they finally got off on the Arsenal Street exit and made their way home.

     I snowblowed the driveway twice more Saturday night after their arrival. Then again first thing Christmas morning. The kids pitched in and helped. The snowbanks were piling up. We started having a hard time finding places to put snow.

We were all still hoping my son-in-law Matt would get released. This would be he & my oldest daughter Chelsea Rae’s 1st Christmas with our new granddaughter. I wanted to make sure he could get into the driveway and have a place to park if he was able to make it.

     Finally, at just after noon on Christmas day, my son-in-law made it. All our family was here. Human and canine alike. Gifts were wrapped and under the tree. We spent the afternoon opening presents while the storm raged outside.

     Later that evening, we took a break from gift-giving and receiving while I went out and snowblowed again. There was another solid foot of drifted snow on the ground. When I came in, we finished our family’s Christmas. I fell asleep. Unbeknownst to me, all the kids went out and cleared the driveway again.

     Monday morning arrived. I got up early and snowblowed once more, another six inches had fallen overnight. The kids came out, we cleaned and cleared vehicles, and my mother’s sidewalk.

The kids all packed up. The winds had finally let up a bit. RJ and Carrie headed back to Corning. They reported clear skies and bare roads once they hit Sandy Creek. Shortly thereafter, my oldest daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter headed north to Clayton.  They reported the same thing there. Clear skies and minimal new snow.

     Not so here in Watertown. The lake effect band continued to pound us with snow. The lake effect snow band was not much more than twenty miles wide.

     I snowblowed my driveway 3 times on Monday. The snowbanks had by then risen over my head.

Every time the plow came through, I had to go out and clean the end of the driveway again.

  Monday afternoon my daughter Abby and her pups were finally able to make it home to their own apartment in Watertown. I cleared the driveway once more Monday night.  Most of the nation was by then done with the storm. But here off the east end of Lake Ontario at the Monroe house, Christmas Lake Effect storm Elliott was not yet done with us.

     Today is Tuesday. I woke up to another overnight blast of fresh snow. Five inches where it hadn’t drifted. Another round of snowblowing. My ninth time since Friday.

Another Lake Effect Life Lesson I’ve learned through the years:

It’s far easier to snowblow four inches of fresh snowfall three times than a drifted foot once.

We are now approaching a storm total of four feet.  

    For most of the nation, the storm ended two days ago. The weather folks report a nationwide warming trend under way.

    Not here, on the eastern end of Lake Ontario.  Here the lake effect snow is still falling.  I can look out the window and all I see are dark clouds and white flakes.

Nearly the only thing I’ve done since Friday at 11:20 a.m. is move snow, eat, nap, swap out hat and gloves, repeat.

     I’ve lived in two places in my life. Saranac Lake and Watertown, New York. On any given day from October through May, one or the other is either the coldest or snowiest spot in the lower 48.

     I hear stories about folks who live in places that are snow free and warm. I don’t know if those are true stories or just rumors.

    I’m a north country boy.

I live the lake effect life.

I know nothing else.

**********

Until Our Trails Cross Again:

Happy Holidays!

ADKO

(P.S. As I finished penning this piece last year, two days post-Christmas, it was still snowing at our house. We ended up with more snow from that storm than most anyone else, even Buffalo!)