Record Breaking Snow Storms To Cost Cities Millions
Storms, driven primarily by lake-effect snow, will dump as much as three feet of snow on cities, particularly those in western Pennsylvania and New York State. Northern Wisconsin and western Michigan will receive several inches to a foot. Cities in these regions have snow removal budgets for the winter season. If the snowfall is great enough, some of those would be spent in several days.
One of the US cities that gets the most snow is Erie, PA, which gets an average of 100 inches each year. Its budget for snow removal is just over $400,000. Erie could receive almost 40 inches of snow the first weekend of December.
Buffalo has an $8 million budget for snow removal, but it is far larger than Erie. Buffalo covers 340 square miles. Erie covers 19.
Great Lakes
The snowfall situation will worsen. Warm water in the Great Lakes drives lake-effect snow. This water rises into the atmosphere. When the clouds move over the colder land, the moisture falls rapidly.
As lake-effect snow increases in frequency and intensity, some cities along Lake Erie’s east coast will need larger snow removal budgets. Erie, Buffalo, and Syracuse are not rich cities, so they will be hard to afford.
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