Historic Snowfall in New York – 80″ in Orchard Park!

21 Nov 2022, 2:00 pm

GREAT LAKES – Heavy snow is winding down in upstate New York after what has been a record-breaking lake effect event!

How Much Snow?

Think of the tallest person you know. That’s about how much snow accumulated in the snow belt of New York! As of Sunday, Orchard Park was up to 80″ inches of snow, that’s about 6 feet 8 inches tall! It won’t just be the amount of snow, but the weight of it and the subsequent strain it will put on people’s homes and roofs.

Our field correspondent Jonathan Petramala has been trudging through the snow in Buffalo, New York which received 36.7″ of storm-total snowfall. On Saturday, Buffalo reached another record snowfall event of 17.2 inches! For perspective, the snowiest November Buffalo ever had on record was in 2000, with the snowiest day being 11/20/2000 when just shy of 25″ fell. However, in 2014 from Nov 17 to 19th, 65″ fell in S. Cheektowaga, just outside city limits. Official historical snow reporting stations are at the Buffalo airport and lake effect bands are extremely narrow, leading to the difference in snow totals for the history books!

While a blue sky now shines over Buffalo, NY, people in western New York still have a long way to go to dig out of multiple FEET of snow. Jonathan Petramala reports in Erie County, NY about what people there are still facing.#NYwx #lakeeffect #snow pic.twitter.com/CelThsubTZ

— WeatherNation (@WeatherNation) November 20, 2022

Some of the reports off of Lake Ontario may climb slightly with lake effect bands still sticking around overnight into Monday. Our top reports so far off of Lake Ontario have been up to 72″ in Natural Bridge, NY.

For more on this, join WeatherNation for our Eastern Regional Forecasts at :10 past the hour and for your top Weather Headlines.

About the author

Alana Cameron

Alana Cameron was born and raised in Canada in the city of Mississauga, just outside of Toronto. Alana is the oldest of 4 siblings, all close in age, and grew up playing outside with them in all types of weather. After graduating high school, Alana moved to study at the University of British Columbia in Kelowna for a year before transferring to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia where sh... Load Moree completed a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Atmospheric Science. Upon completion, Alana moved back to Toronto where she completed a post-grad degree in Meteorology at York University. After her post-grad, she went on to complete another post-grad in Broadcast Journalism - TV News at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. During her final year of studies she had the privilege of interning with the best in the business in Canada at The Weather Network. Once she finished her internship, she got the call from small-town Denison, Texas where she accepted a job as an on-air meteorologist at KTEN-TV, right in tornado alley, covering severe weather from Sherman/Denison (North Texas) to Ada (Southern Oklahoma). After the most active tornado season Oklahoma had seen in May 2019 (105 tornadoes!) Alana is excited to join WeatherNation to cover weather all across the nation. If you're interested in following her on social media she can be found @alanacameronwx!