In & Out of Buffalo & St. Petersburg

This was a long, weird week, particularly in terms of experiencing weather. I spent last Sunday riding my bike in near blizzard conditions, and shovelling snow, then Monday night I flew to St. Petersburg, Florida where my relatives gather for Christmas. The weather in St. Pete was in the 70s all week. When I returned to Buffalo last night (at Midnight) it was 60 degrees and almost all the snow was gone. This morning I was awakened by the house shaking from high winds. I always find this unnerving, I imagine the house moving and pulling away from the chimney. But then I remind my self that this structure has withstood this kind of treatment for 118 years, and that it's unlikely that this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. The high winds also caused a seiche event, I haven't checked but it looks like the lake level was up by about seven feet. I went to photograph the lake around 11 am and it was violently frothing, images below.

Our car after the driveway dig out Monday, December 22

Peace River, Florida, December 26

Grapefruits from my Grandparents' backyard tree, the enormous one weighs 2.5 pounds!

View of the lake from LaSalle Park. The lake was up by about six feet when this photo was taken.

Wave spray in a restaurant parking lot on Lakeshore Road, Hamburg.

Wind blown powerlines

View of Buffalo and Lackawanna from Hamburg Town Park

Hamburg Town Park

Seiche/Dead Salamander

In January we had a wind storm that caused a seiche event. The sustained winds from the west pushed the water levels at the Buffalo end of the lake 10.5 feet above normal (the max is 12). The most spectacular results of the seiche took place on the Nowak Pier, a walkway that runs along the top of a seawall that divides the Niagara river from a canal that runs along side it for over a mile. When the water receded tons of ice was dropped on the walkway causing significant damage to the railing posts and cables. Some of the iceberg-like ice chunks that were lifted onto the walkway way were over 8 ft high. There are more images on my Flickr page.

I found a dead mudpuppy salamander(which I mistook for a Hellbender, I had never seen either in real life before) frozen solid on top of ten feet of ice. It looked to be about 10 inches long. The storm must have disturbed its hibernation(?).