Anatomy of a forecast: 'Arborgeddon' takes buffalo by surprise

摘要

From late in the afternoon of Thursday, October 12, 2006, through the predawn darkness of the following morning, a crippling early season snowstorm engulfed Buffalo, New York, dumping as much as 3 inches of snow per hour on the community. The city's prized trees, still in full foliage, strained and snapped under the weight of the heavy, wet snow. Lightning and crashing power lines alternated to light up the sky with flashing brilliance. "I called it the night the trees cried," said Tom Niziol, the meteorologist-in-charge of the Buffalo office of NOAA's National Weather Service and a widely recognized authority on lake effect snow. "I have never experienced a storm of this power and this fury."rnWhen it was over, 22.6 inches of snow had accumulated at Niziol's office at the Buffalo airport, with some 10 to 20 inches in the city itself. It was by far the greatest October snowstorm ever recorded in Buffalo, and the sixth'largest snowfall in the city's history. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power, many for more than a week. Ninety percent of the city's trees suffered at least moderate damage, leading some Buffalo residents to call the storm "Arborgeddon."