I grew up in Orchard Park, NY on the south side of Buffalo.
The Blizzard of 77 I was 14 years old. We received 3+’ of snow over several days. The wind blew as high as 75 mph. It blew all the snow that had accumulated on the frozen surface of Lake Erie onto the land of WNY. There were snow drifts 8-10’ high. School was closed for a week.
They called out the National Guard. They also asked anyone who owned a snowmobile to go to their neighborhood fire station to
take food to elderly people.
I remember riding down a 4 lane road on the back of my buddies snowmobile. We went over a bump in the road. I looked back and we had just driven over a car.
I had a post-doc at UB in 1983-84 and heard stories about the blizzard of ‘77. Some of my cousins had lived there for decades (although there seemed to be tendency for them to move to southern California for some reason). They mostly lived in an Italian neighborhood near the Peace Bridge.
I was in Tonawanda for that and same thing.
My best friend and I went looking for her sister’s former convertible and found it by the antenna sticking up out of the snow.
There was a front loader scooping up snow to clear the street and we stood off to the side looking down on it as the guy worked. The snow was packed harder than any snow I had ever seen. You COULD NOT leave a boot print or mark in it, and we tried. It was solid as a rock. Hard as ice but not slippery like it.