Moscow airports delay or cancel more than 100 flights in storm

NDTV: Moscow international airports on Friday delayed or cancelled more than 100 flights due to stormy weather.

A weather warning issued by the emergencies ministry in Moscow predicted storms and strong winds of more than 50 miles per hour that could topple trees and bring down power lines.

At around 10 pm (1900 GMT), 73 flights were delayed and eight cancelled at Domodedovo airport to the south of the city, according to Yandex search engine's timetable service.

A further 40 flights were delayed and eight cancelled at the northern Sheremetyevo airport while eight were delayed at Vnukovo airport to the west, Yandex said.

Aeroflot carrier, based at Sheremetyevo, on Twitter warned passengers that "currently at Sheremetyevo due to complex weather conditions, flights are being delayed on arrival and departure."...

The control tower at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport, shot by DME Airport, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Texas governor declares states of emergency, more severe weather expected

Ellen Wulfhorst in Reuters: The governor of Texas on Monday declared states of disaster in 24 counties, citing the severe weather and flash flooding that have killed at least two people. The state has been pounded by tornadoes, heavy rainfall, thunderstorms and flooding that forced evacuations and rooftop rescues and left thousands of residents without electrical power.

In declaring the states of disaster in 24 counties, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said: “The State of Texas has taken brisk action in dispatching all available resources to aid those affected by this severe weather system.

“My thoughts and prayers are with all the communities that are suffering as a result of this weather disaster, and I am grateful for the first responders who have worked tirelessly to provide shelter, care and resources to all impacted areas," he said.

Widespread severe thunderstorms were forecast for Monday in north-central and northeast Texas and southern Oklahoma, likely bringing destructive winds, tornadoes and hail, the National Weather Service said.

The Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm and flash-flood warnings as well as tornado watches throughout the region....

A supercell thunderstorm near Teague, Texas, in 2011. Shot by Runningonbrains, public domain

Super storm lashes Australian east coast for third day

Reuters: A cyclonic storm lashed Australia's east coast for a third day on Wednesday, causing millions of dollars of damage to property and infrastructure in Sydney and other cities. Three people have been killed in the wild weather, which has washed away houses, cut power to more than 200,000 homes and stranded a cruise ship off the coast in mountainous seas.

The Bureau of Meteorology warned that a second storm cell was gathering off the coast north of Sydney, with gale force winds of up to 100 km per hour (62 miles per hour) and heavy winds lashing the coast.

The storm caused havoc in Sydney, felling trees, downing power lines and knocking out traffic lights. Delayed and canceled transport services due to flooding and strong winds left many commuters stranded in the wet.

New South Wales State Premier Mike Baird urged Sydneysiders to delay unnecessary travel and avoid traveling during peak times if possible. "There is no doubt this is a very severe storm event, indeed it is a once in 10-year event," Baird told reporters.

The Insurance Council of Australia said more than 7,500 insurance claims had been lodged. NSW State Emergency Service deputy commissioner Steve Pearce said damage costs were already in the millions and were expected to rise....

Sydney Harbor in better weather, shot by Andy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

‘Warm blob’ in Pacific Ocean linked to weird weather across the US

Hannah Hickey at UW Today (University of Washington): The one common element in recent weather has been oddness. The West Coast has been warm and parched; the East Coast has been cold and snowed under. Fish are swimming into new waters, and hungry seals are washing up on California beaches.

A long-lived patch of warm water off the West Coast, about 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, is part of what’s wreaking much of this mayhem, according to two University of Washington papers to appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

“In the fall of 2013 and early 2014 we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn’t cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year,” said Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the UW-based Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a joint research center of the UW and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Bond coined the term “the blob” last June in his monthly newsletter as Washington’s state climatologist. He said the huge patch of water – 1,000 miles in each direction and 300 feet deep – had contributed to Washington’s mild 2014 winter and might signal a warmer summer.

...Bond says that although the blob does not seem to be caused by climate change, it has many of the same effects for West Coast weather. “This is a taste of what the ocean will be like in future decades,” Bond said. “It wasn’t caused by global warming, but it’s producing conditions that we think are going to be more common with global warming.”...

Image of the warm blob in April 2014 from NOAA

Stronger storms feared as dry spell forecast in Philippines

Zee News: The disaster-haunted Philippines is likely to be hit by stronger typhoons this year as warming ocean surfaces contribute to a dry spell, the state weather service warned Wednesday.

The Asian archipelago, whipped by about 20 typhoons and storms each year, is now in the grips of the "El Nino" phenomenon that can make storms "stronger" and more "erratic", weather service chief Vicente Malano said.

"El Nino may cause the behaviour of tropical cyclones to become erratic, affecting (their) tracks and intensity," he said in an advisory, adding that the same number of storms are expected.

"The tropical cyclone tracks are expected to shift northward and (their) intensity could become stronger," Malano said.

Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest ever to hit land, left more than 7,350 people dead or missing in central regions of the Philippines in November 2013 as it dumped tsunami-like waves on coastlines, wiping out entire towns....

2013's Typhoon Haiyan viewed from a Navy research satellite

Afghanistan snow storms kill more than 80, but ease drought fear

Mirwais Harooni at the Thomson Reuters Foundation via Reuters: More than 80 people have been killed in Afghanistan in avalanches following heavy snow, officials said on Wednesday, with the bad weather set to last for two more days after an unusually dry winter led to fears of drought.

Officials warned of an imminent humanitarian emergency in areas most severely hit by the bad weather, with snow sweeping through villages and blocking off roads.

"We haven't seen this much snow, or this many avalanches, for 30 years," said Abdul Rahman Kabiri, acting governor of the mountainous province of Panjshir, north of Kabul, where more than 30 people were killed in avalanches.

"If the central government doesn't provide humanitarian support, machinery and food soon, this will turn to a disaster," he said, adding that more than 20 people had been injured.

Despite bringing death and misery to so many people, the snow is vital for Afghanistan, where much of the rural population dependent on agriculture relies on snow melting in the mountains to sustain crops in the spring and summer....

Snow in "K-G" Pass in Afghanistan, a shot by the US military

Another winter storm to pummel eastern United States with snow and sleet

As Bill Murray said in Ghostbusters, "That's the one that slimed me." From Victoria Cavaliere in Reuters: A fresh band of winter weather that churned up the East Coast on Saturday, pummeling the storm-weary region with snow, sleet and freezing rain, was expected to gradually taper off Sunday morning, forecasters said.

Six inches or more of fresh snow was forecast for parts of the Northeast by early Sunday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Bitter cold is also expected, but conditions should start to ease in many areas by mid-morning, the service said.

Boston, which had already been hit by 98.7 inches (251 cm) of snow going into the weekend, saw only about an inch Saturday, but local weather watchers there were forecasting the total tally to hit 100 inches by midnight. The city's total is well above the average yearly total of 31 inches (79 cm).

The new round of harsh weather is part of a system that has cut a curving, 2,000-mile path from southern Missouri to Maine.

Snow and ice contributed to major delays at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York Saturday, with some arriving flights delayed more than two hours, and flights destined for Newark International Airport in New Jersey were delayed more than three hours, according to a Federal Aviation Administration advisory.

Winter weather advisories and winter storm warnings were in effect until Sunday for parts of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, the NWS said.

A snowflake, shot by Pen Weggener, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attrbution 2.0 Generic license

Strong storms to become stronger, weak storms to become weaker

A press release at the University of Toronto News: A study led by atmospheric physicists at the University of Toronto finds that global warming will not lead to an overall increasingly stormy atmosphere, a topic debated by scientists for decades. Instead, strong storms will become stronger while weak storms become weaker, and the cumulative result of the number of storms will remain unchanged.

“We know that with global warming we’ll get more evaporation of the oceans,” said Frédéric Laliberté, a research associate at U of T’s physics department and lead author of a study published this week in Science. “But circulation in the atmosphere is like a heat engine that requires fuel to do work, just like any combustion engine or a convection engine.”

The atmosphere’s work as a heat engine occurs when an air mass near the surface takes up water through evaporation as it is warmed by the sun and moves closer to the equator. The warmer the air mass is, the more water it takes up. As it reaches the equator, it begins to ascend through the atmosphere, eventually cooling as it radiates heat out into space. Cool air can hold less moisture than warm air, so as the air cools, condensation occurs, which releases heat.  When enough heat is released, air begins to rise even further, pulling more air behind it producing a thunderstorm. The ultimate “output” of this atmospheric engine is the amount of heat and moisture that is redistributed between the equator and the North and South Poles.

“By viewing the atmospheric circulation as a heat engine, we were able to rely on the laws of thermodynamics to analyze how the circulation would change in a simulation of global warming,” said Laliberté. “We used these laws to quantify how the increase in water vapour that would result from global warming would influence the strength of the atmospheric circulation.”

...The scientists concluded that the increase in water vapour was making the process less efficient by evaporating water into air that is not already saturated with water vapour. They showed that this inefficiency limited the strengthening of atmospheric circulation, though not in a uniform manner. Air masses that are able to reach the top of the atmosphere are strengthened, while those that cannot are weakened...

A thunderstorm over Ueterson, Germany, shot by Huhu Uet, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Climate change responsible for super-charging winter storms, scientists say

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): Winters may be getting shorter, but watch out when it does snow: climate change is super-charging storms like the blizzard engulfing the American north-east, scientists said on Monday.

The heavier storms of recent years – snowfalls that shut down cities and brought heavy flooding to coastal areas of New England – carried the imprints of climate change, as researchers get better at detecting the fingerprints of global warming – even from snow.

It was too soon to pin the current storm to climate change, but a trend line was emerging, the scientists said. “The snow season is getting shorter,” said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “But the interesting thing is you can end up with heavier snows in part because of climate change.”

In general, climate change produces more extreme precipitation in North America – and if it’s cold enough, that produces snow. ... Nor’easters pack their punch from the contrast between cold land temperatures at the warmer Gulf stream and surrounding waters. Five of New York’s biggest snow storms have occurred since 2000, and 2014 was the hottest year in 130 years of temperatures records.

...“You can easily get as much as 20% more snow out of a storm than you would otherwise, as long as it is cold enough so that all of that moisture gets converted into snow. And that is usually the case in the wintertime,” Trenberth said....

NASA image of the current visitor to Carbon Based headquarters, January 27, 2015

More Malawi floods in the next two weeks

Yamikani Yapuwa and Memory Kutengule in AllAfrica.com via Malawi News Agency:  The Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services has warned of high rainfall amounts which will eventually trigger flash floods and flooding in potential flood prone districts in the next two weeks. Director of Climate Change and Meteorological Services Jolam Nkhokwe said the trend is as a result of the activeness of Congo air mass coupled with a low pressure area in the Mozambique Channel.

He said: "Our two main rain bearing systems which are the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and Congo air mass coupled with a low pressure area located in the Mozambique Channel remain active. "This will consequently cause wide spread rainfall associated with high rainfall amounts. The high rainfall amounts cumulatively are expected to trigger flash floods and flooding in potential flood prone districts such as, Nsanje, Chikhwawa, Phalombe, Mangochi, Salima, Nkhata bay and Karonga," warned Nkhokwe.

Nkhokwe further warned that during this period severe thunderstorms are expected and would be accompanied by strong winds and lighting because of the accumulation of heat energy in the atmosphere. "The general public is therefore being advised to be indoors during periods of severe thunderstorms to avoid lighting strikes and should take caution when crossing swelling rivers," cautioned Nkhokwe.

And Assistant District Disaster and Risk Management Officer for Blantyre, Alibewake Maulawo has disclosed to Malawi News Agency that at least 561 households in Blantyre District have been affected by the stormy rains since October last year....

Locator map of Malawi by TUBS, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Travel chaos as heavy snow hits Turkey

Terra Daily via AFP: Heavy snowfall descended on large parts of Turkey on Tuesday, snarling road and air traffic and leading to closures of schools, reports said.

In the northern province of Karabuk, a school bus went off the road and turned over on to its side in slick conditions caused by snow, leaving a student dead and 18 others injured, the Dogan news agency reported.

The snowfall also seriously disrupted road traffic across Turkey and caused trouble with the electricity network causing some power cuts, particularly in the northern parts of the country.

Turkey's national flag-carrier Turkish Airlines cancelled 44 international and domestic flights in and out of Istanbul and some other cities including the capital Ankara.

In mega-city Istanbul, the authorities appeared to take every precaution including closing down schools. But the snow has so far failed to appear in the city in the quantities predicted. Some ferries across the Bosphorus have been cancelled....

A 2008 snowstorm in Istanbul, shot by David Benito davidbenito, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license 

Nine deaths in Mozambique's torrential rains

AllAfrica.com via Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique: At least nine people died on Saturday morning when torrential rains struck the northern Mozambican port city of Nacala, according to a report on the independent television station, STV. The storm also swept away over 60 houses, mostly built of flimsy materials and severely damaged roads in the city.

The nine deaths were caused by lightning strikes, and by the collapse of a warehouse wall on top of adjacent houses. The collapse caused the deaths of five people from the same household. There were two survivors who are receiving medical care at the local health centre.

The clinical director of Nacala district hospital, Marciana Machatine, said that of the injured people who were taken to the hospital, one had died, but the others were recovering. “Their clinical state is stable”, she said, “but even so they must remain hospitalized for the time being”.

Machatine took the opportunity to urge Nacala households to cover their homes with zinc sheeting rather than with thatch to make them more resistant during storms. Most of the traditional houses in Nacala have walls made of mud bricks, and are covered with thatch. They are always in danger of collapse during heavy rains....

The beach in Nacala, Mozambique, shot by Stig Nygaard Stig Nygaard, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Lives of danger, poverty on Philippines' typhoon coast

Terra Daily via AFP: Life is a constant throw of the dice for farmer Nilo Dilao and other residents of the Philippine island of Samar, the ground zero for many of East Asia's deadliest storms. Homes, boats, crops, livestock and jobs are all on the line each time the monster winds roar in from the Pacific Ocean, leaving survivors to mourn their dead and pick up the broken pieces, year in and year out.

"Life is a struggle here," Dilao, 43, told AFP a few days after Typhoon Hagupit destroyed his shanty and killed more than 20 people this month. He likened the plight of local people to those of stray chickens. "We're scratching at the soil non-stop in hopes of finding a scrap to eat," he said.

Hagupit came a year after Super Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest ever storm recorded on land, killed 7,350 people on Samar and neighbouring islands.

Samar, about half the size of Belgium, is often the first major Asian landmass hit by the more than 20 tropical storms or typhoons that are born in the Pacific Ocean each year.

With much of the mountainous island stripped by deforestation, most of its 1.8 million residents live on narrow, sea-level strips along the coast, at the mercy of the storms' ferocious winds and tsunami-like ocean surges....

In Samar, after 2013's Typhoon Haiyan. US Department of Defense photo

Heavy snow kills 5, disrupts travel in Japan

Terra Daily via AFP: At least five people have died in heavy snow that has blanketed swathes of Japan, reports said Thursday, with more than two metres (6ft 7ins) lying in some places and more forecast.

Two elderly women were killed on the northernmost island of Hokkaido, Kyodo News reported, with one hit by a snow-plough and another buried when a warehouse collapsed under the weight of fallen snow. Two men, meanwhile, died in traffic accidents on snow-bound roads, one in Hokkaido and the other in Hiroshima further south, police said.

Another man, 68, was discovered dead outside his home in Niigata on the main island of Honshu, police said, with reports saying he had fallen from the garage roof while removing snow.

There was also widespread disruption to travel, with around 100 domestic flights cancelled, adding to the 450 that were grounded on Wednesday, including some international routes, officials and media said....

Snow in Sapporo in 2009, shot by aokomoriuta, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license  

17 dead, nearly 100 missing in Indonesian landslide

Terra Daily: Torrential downpours triggered a landslide on Indonesia's main island of Java, killing at least 17 people and leaving nearly 100 others missing, with persistent rain hampering rescue efforts, officials said Saturday.

Hundreds of rescuers were digging with shovels through mud and rubble after the landslide buried scores of houses in Jemblung village in central Java late Friday, the national disaster agency said. The landslide swept down a hillside in the village, sparing only two houses, an AFP correspondent said.

"The rescue team have found 17 bodies," the national disaster agency's spokesman, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, told AFP, adding that 11 others were badly injured and rescuers were searching for 91 people still missing. The disaster agency said that 200 rescuers and 500 volunteers had joined the search for the missing....

Locator map of Java by Jeanot, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Global warming's influence on extreme weather

A press release from Stanford University: Extreme climate and weather events such as record high temperatures, intense downpours and severe storm surges are becoming more common in many parts of the world. But because high-quality weather records go back only about 100 years, most scientists have been reluctant to say if global warming affected particular extreme events.

On Wednesday, Dec. 17, at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science at the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, will discuss approaches to this challenge in a talk titled "Quantifying the Influence of Observed Global Warming on the Probability of Unprecedented Extreme Climate Events." He will focus on weather events that – at the time they occur – are more extreme than any other event in the historical record.

Diffenbaugh emphasizes that asking precisely the right question is critical for finding the correct answer. "The media are often focused on whether global warming caused a particular event," said Diffenbaugh, who is a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "The more useful question for real-world decisions is: 'Is the probability of a particular event statistically different now compared with a climate without human influence?'"

Diffenbaugh said the research requires three elements: a long record of climate observations; a large collection of climate model experiments that accurately simulate the observed variations in climate; and advanced statistical techniques to analyze both the observations and the climate models.

One research challenge involves having just a few decades or a century of high-quality weather data with which to make sense of events that might occur once every 1,000 or 10,000 years in a theoretical climate without human influence.

But decision makers need to appreciate the influence of global warming on extreme climate and weather events. "If we look over the last decade in the United States, there have been more than 70 events that have each caused at least $1 billion in damage, and a number of those have been considerably more costly," said Diffenbaugh. "Understanding whether the probability of those high-impact events has changed can help us to plan for future extreme events, and to value the costs and benefits of avoiding future global warming."

Navarre Beach, Florida, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. FEMA photo

Indian anti-cyclone actions slash extreme-weather risks

Gareth Willmer at SciDev.net: Developing nations should build resilience to extreme-weather events by learning from previous disasters and introducing technology such as early warning systems, says a report by UK-based scientific academy the Royal Society.  

As an example, the researchers highlight Cyclone Phailin, which hit the east Indian state of Odisha in October 2013. It was the area’s strongest storm since Cyclone 05B struck in 1999, killing almost 9,000 people and leaving more than 1.5 million homeless. Yet just 44 people were killed in Odisha by the 2013 cyclone and related flash floods.  

While last year’s storm still caused significant destruction, the researchers say the vastly reduced human cost shows “the effectiveness of building resilience through preparedness, early warnings, political commitment and technology”. They highlight how Odisha has pumped major investment this millennium into early-warning systems, infrastructure improvements, evacuation planning and shelters.  

And such measures could be key in coming years as developing nations face a “significant and increasing” risk from extreme weather due to their growing populations and climate change, they say. Maps in the report illustrate that the impact of floods, heatwaves and droughts will grow in many areas worldwide, but the risk will be amplified in regions such as South Asia, South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa because of their patterns of population rise and urbanisation....

NASA image of Cyclone Phailin, October 11, 2013

California residents braced for floods and mudslides as rain sweeps state

Amanda Holpunch in the Guardian (UK): A Pacific storm is sweeping through California, providing the drought-stricken state with a brief respite from its arid conditions but triggering fears of mudslides and floods. The downpour, however, will put a minor dent in the three-year drought and comes with mudslide evacuations, traffic hazards and concerns that it could give a misleading impression of the state’s water conditions.

The Los Angeles region could experience its heaviest rainfall in two years. The National Weather Service predicted that up to six inches could fall in the southern part of the state by the end of Wednesday. Authorities on Tuesday issued a mandatory evacuation for 75 homes in Camarillo Springs, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles. The order was lifted at 6pm, though people were urged to voluntarily stay out of their homes. Voluntary evacuation notices were also issued to dozens of other homes in southern California.

San Francisco’s famed cable cars had to shut down during the downpour. The California highway patrol reported an increase in traffic hazards and a large number of car crashes in the Bay Area. Many flights in the region were delayed because of the rain.

Sacramento received 0.53 inches of rain on Tuesday, and was due for another half-inch into Wednesday. Over the next few days, more than four inches of rain are expected in the mountainous parts of the state.

Flash-flood warnings were issued to in parts of El Dorado and Placer counties because of the quick pace of the rain storm. These regions were beset by the King Fire, which covered more than 150 square miles and brought in firefighters from other states including Alaska and Florida. The state has launched projects to fight erosion of the devastated land...

The Golden Gate through the rain drops. A beautiful shot by Brocken Inaglory Brocken Inaglory, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0

Britain left 'exposed' to more floods and heatwaves

Ian Johnston in the Independent (UK): The UK is dangerously "exposed" to increasingly extreme weather brought about by climate change, a leading adviser to the Government has warned.

Professor Lord Krebs, who chairs an expert group of the independent Committee on Climate Change (CCC), said thousands of lives could be lost in searing heatwaves, and a lack of spending on flood defences would lead to "unnecessary flood damage" unless action was taken. He called on Britain and other countries to do more to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, saying global warming could have "profound implications" even for wealthy countries such as the UK.

In an article for The Independent on Sunday, on our website, Lord Krebs applauded some steps of recent years, noting that 1.4 million homes were protected, and no one died, in last winter's floods. "And yet," he said, "the UK is still exposed in key areas."

The National Audit Office and the CCC's Adaptation Sub-Committee, which he chairs, have concluded "not enough money is being spent on flood prevention". Lord Krebs said: "As a result, unnecessary flood damage will occur... The current approach in England is to 'build and protect'; to allow development on the floodplain as long as there are flood defences in place," he said. "This simply stores up costs and risks for the future. Indeed, such development is encouraged."...

The English countryside near Cold Moor, shot by Scott Rimmer, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

New York state snow emergency: five dead, 100+ trapped in monster winter storm

NBC News: Troopers in all-terrain vehicles set out Wednesday to reach drivers trapped in a ferocious winter storm that dumped 5 feet of snow outside Buffalo, New York — with plenty more on the way. More than 130 miles of Interstate 90, the main artery running east and west across New York state, remained closed, with no word when it would reopen. More than 100 cars were reported trapped on Tuesday night.

Authorities in Erie County, which includes Buffalo, reported a fifth death, a 46-year-old man found in a car. Four were reported Tuesday, one in a car crash and three from heart attacks, including two people who were shoveling snow.

The towns south of Buffalo were believed to be the hardest hit, but snow totals were hard to come by. The National Weather Service said some places could approach the record for a single-day snowfall in the United States, 6 feet 4 inches.

...Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency for 10 counties, and the National Guard was activated to help clean up. The state deployed 526 snowplows and 17 large snow blowers. The weather service warned that 3 to 8 more inches of snow could fall Wednesday, and up to 2 feet more by Thursday night outside Buffalo....

The early stages of a 2006 lake effect snow storm in Buffalo, New York, shot by Jason Safoutin, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 2.5 license