Orchard Park, N.Y. (WBEN) - This past weekend's lake effect snowstorm that impacted many regions across Western New York certainly left its mark on a number local municipalities, but none were, perhaps, more impacted than the Town and Village of Orchard Park.
Over the course of 24 hours between late Thursday evening and into Friday night, Orchard Park saw a whopping 66 inches of snow fall, which is the greatest one-day snowfall total anywhere in New York State has ever seen. By the end of the major round of snow that fell come Saturday, portions of the region had seen up to 77 inches of snow.
While Orchard Park may not have received the most total snowfall when all was said and done - 80 inches from Wednesday night to Sunday night - it was the epicenter of a snowstorm that will certainly be remembered for years to come not only in Western New York, but across the nation.
"That's incredible for a couple days, actually 24 hours, and then through the weekend. That's just a lot of snow," said Orchard Park resident Mike, who was shoveling out his driveway on Monday. "I'm just glad that we got a lot of blue sky and sunshine now that it's let up, give people a chance to clear out their areas as best as they can. ... I've been in New York many years, been through the Blizzard of '77 and all these other blizzards, and just having this all at once, if spread out over a couple of days, you can kind of get out and maybe move some. But all in one day, that's just a lot of snow."
Back in 2014, a similar lake effect snowstorm struck the region that dumped up to seven feet of snow over the span of 4-5 days. The storm, now famously known as "Snowvember", certainly left a lasting mark on the entire Western New York community and the people who lived in the hardest hit areas.
For owner of B-Lo Studio, Jennifer Gorney on N. Buffalo Street, she lived in West Seneca at the time of the 2014 storm, which was one of the communities hardest hit. While she has since relocated to Chaffee, which received just under a foot of snow from this storm, she was blown away by the snow totals that buried Orchard Park this time around.
"It's pretty amazing to see people's houses just buried, I feel bad for them," said Gorney on Monday. "It's just incredible, but these guys have done a great job looking at the roads. It takes the cake, definitely."
Meanwhile, Joe Wales from W. G. Arthur Co. that operates Arthuer's Hardware and Arthur's Home Furnishing has been in Orchard Park for 28 years and has dealt with a number of significant snowstorms in his time in the village. While he says it may seem funny to some, he feels this storm was better to handle, and less than what he experienced with the 2014 storm.
"Yes, it was more snow that first day on Friday, however, I recall in 'Snovember' 2014, for example, we have five flat roofs here at our complex, and I was on those five roofs for five-straight days shoveling. However, with this storm, I was only on the roof for three days shoveling. So, to me, this was a lot less and not as big of a burden, but regardless, it was insane," said Wales on Monday. "The snow on our roofs were up past my belt, so I had assumed they're about 42 inches tall on top of our roofs. Thankfully, we have a great team here who helped me not only clear the grounds all day Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and I was back here at the store at six o'clock this morning to keep the grounds clear and the roofs clear. We are safe, no damage. We're very blessed."
While the response to the storm that was has finally transitioned from an emergency response plan of attack to now digging out from the deep snow that fell, officials in Orchard Park know they still have their hands full, and they're not out of the woods just yet.
"We have a lot of out-of-town resources here helping us out, both in the town and the village. Every one of our streets, at this point is passable. It may be the width of a loader bucket, but it is passable. So getting emergency resources to people is a lot easier, at this point, especially with the forecast the way that it's looking going into this week," said Orchard Park Chief of Police, Patrick Fitzgerald on Monday. "Our goals now are going to be getting the roads back open curb-to-curb, making it safe for two-way traffic, removing a lot of the hard pack that exists. Driving down some of these streets is slow and treacherous still, so that's why we have our travel advisory in place. But also clearing out the intersections, we have 12-13 foot piles of snow that make getting from place-to-place difficult. So managing those logistics - the housing, the food, the assignments - we have loaders, we have trucks, we have excavators. We have a lot of people here helping us, but it's a matter of managing them, and we are going 24/7. So this will continue until we've got our community back the way it was before those snowflakes fell."
As the sun made its appearance across the region on Monday, that will certainly help with the melting of some of the snow that's already packed down. On top of that, temperatures started to climb back above freezing, which will also add to helping cleanup efforts going forward.
While heavy wind gusts may not help cleanup efforts in the coming hours, Chief Fitzgerald remains optimistic that the Town and Village of Orchard Park will have the majority of efforts done and taken care of before the Thanksgiving holiday.
"It's going to be quite the feat. I can't say enough about the teamwork that has gone into the storm between the pre-planning that occurred, the actual storm response itself, and now the cleanup efforts," Fitzgerald said. "Our emergency services employees - police, fire, EMS, our dispatch staff, town and village employees that have come in to staff call centers, our Public Works staff, village DPW, town, highway, County Highway state D.O.T. - all working together, long, long hours, not a lot of sleep through some just terrible conditions out there to keep things going. The demands that have been placed upon every one of our agencies over the last couple of days has been tremendous. But through our teamwork and our cooperation and communication, we're doing it."
As residents and business owners continue to dig out from the storm that buried the region over the weekend, they're hopeful the snow will be cleared out by Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday, but obviously there's never any guarantee when it comes to what Mother Nature has in store.
"I think another week, at least. If people are kind and let them do their jobs, it's probably gonna be another good week," Gorney said. "They're working around the clock, and you can see all the trucks moving the snow, that's what is truly unbelievable to see all those trucks moving the snow. Who would have ever thought we would see something like that?"
As officials in Orchard Park continue to work on removing some of the snow that fell in the town and village, some residents are concerned with what will happen with the snow that will remain in place in their yards.
"The main thing is how long it's going to be here. I know this week, we're supposed to get above 40 for several days, and hopefully, a lot of it disappears. But some of it could be here till next spring, especially the mounds from the pay loaders that cleared the street," said resident Gary Girardet on Monday.
Parking will also be a concern for some people, including businesses like Gorney's in the Village of Orchard Park. This will especially be of concern with the Thanksgiving week here, and people expected to be out-and-about in the coming days before and after the holiday on Thursday.
"It's going to be very difficult," she said. "The parking is the No. 1 concern and, of course, everyone's safety, just keeping everything salted to make sure they're safe coming in and out. Parking is just huge right now. We're hosting a pop up event, of course, on Sunday here, and I'm very worried about parking and how they're going to access this building."
While snowstorms of this magnitude is nothing new to Fitzgerald and his crew with Orchard Park Police, this storm certainly stood out from other storms of the past, especially the "Snowvember" storm of 2014, where Orchard Park received more snow in a shorter period of time than what was seen eight years ago.
"In our planning, we rely on the forecast, and the forecast said between Thursday and Sunday we were looking at 36-48 inches, possibly. But once again, it's a forecast, and it's clear that it stalled over Orchard Park and we got way more than that," Chief Fitzgerald said. "We prepare for the worst, and we hope for the best. We had a lot of pre-planning going into it, we're going to certainly look back and debrief over the next couple of weeks at what we did and what we could do differently. Whether it's purchases of equipment, whether it's different pre-plans or plans of attack for the future, but it is what it is. We dealt with it to the best of our abilities, and we continue to deal with it. And while you can leave your driveway and you can go to work and you can go to the store and go to your neighborhood pub and have a beverage and things like that, the fact is, we still have days ahead of us of work, 24 hours a day. It's not over with yet."
Chief Fitzgerald says he couldn't be more proud of the men and women of his crew for the tireless work they've put into the response effort over the last several days to answer the calls from residents of Orchard Park.
When preparing for what was to come for this storm in 2022, Chief Fitzgerald said there was plenty to take away from their experience in 2014 that helped them greatly this time around. He believes the biggest takeaway from the storm eight years ago was the use of strike teams to help answer the call from residents when an emergency arises.
"We know that when we have so much snow on the roads that our plows are unable to move it and it's coming down faster than they can clear it, we have a lot of difficulty getting to emergency calls, priority emergency calls," Fitzgerald said. "We had, at one point, between 75 and 100 pending calls for service during the height of the storm. People that are calling that are begging us for help. And to not be able to keep up on those phone calls and to not be able to actually get to them, and then have emergency responders that ultimately get stuck and we send more help and they get stuck, it's a helpless feeling. So we utilize our strike teams, we rolled them out right from the beginning. Essentially, it's a front-end loader with a police car with several police officers, and then some sort of an off-road fire vehicle with paramedics and firefighters. While we know that not every call is a police call, and not every call is an EMS or a fire call, it's a team approach. When there's an emergency, we roll the strike team and they punched through. From their staging area to where that emergency is, it's slow, it's tedious, but it's the only way we're gonna be able to get into these neighborhoods and up to the house."
As for Wales and his business of operation, the first day back on Monday after the storm was a busy one with customers coming to the store for all the essential needs.
"It's been non-stop phone calls and visitors to our store. We're selling everything you could possibly imagine," Wales said. "We are out of snow shovels now, we're out of snow blowers. We've got more come in this week, so we'll have more hopefully by the end of the week, but selling everything. Ice melt, windshield wash, you name it. Anything winter-related, we're selling it."
As cleanout efforts continue across the region, many people have been turning to their snow blowers for help to clear out paths in their driveways or on sidewalks to be able to navigate. However, the heavy snow that fell and has now packed down is taking a toll on some snow blowers.
"The burden on the snow blowers is astronomical with this heavy snow," Wales said. "You name it, broken shear pins, broken belts, blah, blah, blah. It's a heavy load for snow blowers, in particular, and we've got three folks back in our shop right now working as hard as they can. However, the queue is long. We're getting to people as we can, but unfortunately, we've got three-week backlog already that we've created before the storm and now after the storm."
In the meantime, Wales cannot continue to give support to the work of the crews clearing out the Town and Village of Orchard Park, who will continue to clean up the snow that remains and give people as much access as possible in the coming days.
"I can't say enough about the Village of Orchard Park and their D.P.W., their director, Emery Wittmeyer," he said. "I was on our roofs all weekend long, and looking down from the roofs, all I saw was loaders, plows. Not only the village, because we're right here in the center of the Village of Orchard Park, but town trucks going by all day long, every day. What an amazing job Orchard Park Highway Department under Andy Slotman, and Emery Wittmeyer in the Village of Orchard Park DPW. An amazing job. And this morning when I came in and saw that they opened up our apron so we could access our parking lot, I was just like tears of joy. Holy cow. Those guys have been working 24/7 for four days straight."
