Upstate NY Road Trip

WhiteFox · February 27, 2007

Hired an SUV last weekend (Presidents Day) and took a drive up to Niagara with my sister and her boyfriend.

Since the middle of January upstate New York had been in the grip of a cold spell and this was in evidence at Niagara Falls. I'm sure a few people here have been there, but I don't know about in winter. If you do go, the middle of February is a good time. In a normal year, i.e. one where December and early January were more seasonal, I expect there would be more ice than we saw.

The SUV we hired. I figured it would be pretty icy upstate, so a huge SUV seemed to be in order. We had six inches of snow in New York on the preceding Wednesday followed by many hours of freezing rain followed by a bit more snow. The result was the most frozen snow I've ever seen. The car is sitting on almost solid ice. The car in front had been parked like that since Wednesday (this was Sunday morning); nothing other than a 4x4 could get on the ice there! Plenty of fun to be had watching people trying to get their cars out; people here are used to digging their car out of snow, but solid ice is a different proposition. One guy resorted to using a claw hammer!

Up in Niagara, it was pretty cold. The temperature fell to about -18oC overnight. Anyone who has been to Niagara knows that there is constant spray from the falls themselves. In those sortds of temperatures the spray freezes on contact with surfaces. Take a look at the ice on this tree:

The next picture is looking across Horseshoe Falls. You can just make out ice in the water. Also, check out the trees on the island!

Another look across the Horseshoe Falls. You can see the pillars which support the railings stopping people from getting too close to the edge (remember Superman?). Some pretty hard, thick ice on them!

View towards the American Falls. They were partly frozen as you can just make out. The best thing was the huge lumps of ice which had formed at the bottom; at night the light displays made them look like huge lumps of coloured shaving foam!

As you can see, the river at the bottom of the falls was pretty well frozen.

On the way back we travelled via Syracuse and headed towards Mexico (NY!). My sister wanted to see some real snow and I was interested to see the aftermath of such huge snowfalls.

Outside the McDonald's in Mexico (also from another picture in the Donald Sutherland thread):

And finally, the sidewalks in Mexico. By this time it was getting dark, so we couldn't get such good pictures. It gives a hint of just how much snow there was around.