Jamestown is a city in southern Chautauqua County, New York, United States. The population was 28,712 at the 2020 census. Situated between Lake Erie to the north and the Allegheny National Forest to the south, Jamestown is the largest city in the county. Nearby Chautauqua Lake is a freshwater resource used by fishermen, boaters, and naturalists.
The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midwest, along with the intermediate cities of Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Rochester and Syracuse. New York Central was headquartered in New York City's New York Central Building, adjacent to its largest station, Grand Central Terminal.
Upstate New York is a geographic region consisting of the area of New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area. Although the precise boundary is debated, Upstate New York excludes New York City and Long Island, and most definitions of the region also exclude all or part of Westchester and Rockland counties, which are typically included in Downstate New York. Major cities across Upstate New York from east to west include Albany, Utica, Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.
Western New York (WNY) is the westernmost region of the U.S. state of New York. The eastern boundary of the region is not consistently defined by state agencies or those who call themselves "Western New Yorkers". Almost all sources agree WNY includes the cities of Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Jamestown, and the surrounding suburbs, as well as the outlying rural areas of the Great Lakes lowlands and Niagara Frontier, and Chautauqua-Alleghany. Many would also place Rochester and the Genesee Valley in the region while some would also include the western Finger Lakes within the region. Others would describe the latter three areas as being in a separate Finger Lakes region.
The Snowbelt, Snow Belt, Frostbelt, or Frost Belt is the region near the Great Lakes in North America where heavy snowfall in the form of lake-effect snow is particularly common. Snowbelts are typically found downwind of the lakes, principally off the eastern and southern shores.
The blizzard of 1977 hit Western New York and Southern Ontario from January 28 to February 1 of that year. Daily peak wind gusts ranging from 46 to 69 mph were recorded by the National Weather Service in Buffalo, with snowfall as high as 100 in (254 cm) recorded in areas, and the high winds blew this into drifts of 30 to 40 ft. There were 23 total storm-related deaths in Western New York, with five more in northern New York.
The Golden Snowball Award is an annual award presented to the city in Upstate New York that receives the most snowfall in a season. The original award was the result of a friendly competition of National Weather Service offices in Upstate. It was originally conceived after the Great Lakes Blizzard of 1977. After the Rochester and Syracuse offices closed in the mid-1990s, the competition died out.
The Niagara Frontier refers to the stretch of land in the United States that is south of Lake Ontario and north of Lake Erie, and extends westward to Cleveland, Ohio. The term dates to the War of 1812, when the northern border was in contention between the United States and British forces in Canada. It refers only to the land east of the Niagara River and north of Lake Erie within the United States. The western side of the Niagara River, on the Canada/Ontario side, is the Niagara Peninsula; it is considered part of the Golden Horseshoe.
The October 2006 Buffalo storm was an unusual early-season lake effect snow storm that hit the Buffalo, New York, area and other surrounding areas of the United States and Canada, from the afternoon of Thursday, October 12 through the morning of Friday, October 13, 2006. It was called Lake Storm Aphid by the National Weather Service office in Buffalo, in accordance with their naming scheme for lake-effect snowstorms for that year, which related to insects, though locals never used that terminology and have simply referred to it as the October Surprise or the October Storm or Arborgeddon.
The Great Lakes Seaway Trail, formerly named and commonly known as the Seaway Trail, is a 518-mile (834 km) National Scenic Byway in the northeastern United States, mostly contained in New York but with a small segment in Pennsylvania. The trail consists of a series of designated roads and highways that travel along the Saint Lawrence Seaway—specifically, Lake Erie, the Niagara River, Lake Ontario, and the Saint Lawrence River. It begins at the Ohio state line in rural Erie County, Pennsylvania, and travels through several cities and villages before ending at the Seaway International Bridge northeast of the village of Massena in St. Lawrence County, New York. It is maintained by the non-profit Seaway Trail, Inc.
Ski country is the hilly, snowy portions of the boundary between the Niagara Frontier and the Southern Tier of the western part of New York.
The Southtowns is a region of Western New York, United States, that lies within the snowbelt or ski country. It includes the southern suburbs of Buffalo, New York. This is the common name for the southern part of Erie County, New York.
The climate of New York (state) is generally a harm climate while the extreme southeastern portion of the state lies in the warmer humid subtropical climate zone. Winter temperatures average below freezing during January and February in much of the state of New York, but several degrees above freezing along the Atlantic coastline, including New York City.
The November 13–21, 2014 North American winter storm was a potent winter storm and particularly severe lake-effect snowstorm that affected the United States, originating from the Pacific Northwest on November 13, which brought copious amounts of lake-effect snow to the Central US and New England from November 15 until November 21, when the system departed the East Coast of the United States. The snowstorm elicited an enormous response from emergency crews and the National Guard, requiring more manpower than any other snowstorm in the history of New York state, as it buried cars and stranded thousands of people in their homes in Western New York. Eight months after the storm, the snow's remnants still remained in Buffalo, New York.
The November 2022 Great Lakes winter storm was a lake-effect winter storm that affected parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. The winter storm caused high accumulations of snow across the Great Lakes region, with several locations receiving 50 in (130 cm) of snowfall across New York, with Hamburg, New York receiving 81.2 in (206 cm) and Orchard Park, New York recording 80 in (200 cm) of snow. At least four fatalities occurred, with three in New York and one in Indiana, and several highways closed after heavy snowfall. A travel ban was also issued for New York by governor Kathy Hochul, and thundersnow occurred across areas impacted by the winter storm.
From December 21 to 26, 2022, a historic extratropical cyclone created crippling winter storm conditions, including blizzards, high winds, snowfall, or record cold temperatures across the majority of the United States and parts of Canada. Areas which experienced blizzard conditions included parts of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario, with the Buffalo area of New York and the Fort Erie and Kingston areas of Ontario experiencing almost two full days of blizzard/zero-visibility conditions on December 23 and 24. The cold wave affected all U.S. states from Colorado to the eastern seaboard and as far south as Miami, Florida. On December 24, 110 million people across 36 states were subject to wind chill alerts.
