Quite Pretty Until the Shoveling Starts

November 21, 2014 11:33 AM

Drone footage of the snow storm aftermath in West Seneca. NY. [slyt | 4k]
posted by quin (30 comments total)

I'm impressed they pilot "threaded the needle" to fly out of the garage through that 3-4' hole above the snow. Pretty cool overview of an ordinary neighborhood, I kind of wish they could do it along the lake closer to a downtown to see how it affected the city proper of Buffalo.
posted by mathowie at 11:36 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

That was quite lovely and did not make me the least bit nostalgic for living in snowy places (not that I ever lived anywhere with snow like that). I did see a photo yesterday in some Buffalo snowstorm slideshow of a guy driving his SUV down a mostly plowed street....and there was a block of snow a good three feet thick on the roof of his car. People who do that really make me not miss living in snowy places.
posted by rtha at 11:44 AM on November 21, 2014

As if it's not bad enough with the snow, the whole area is supposed to warm up dramatically by next week. The flooding is going to be horrible. :(
posted by longdaysjourney at 11:46 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is pretty awesome. The Japan Sea coast also experiences a "lake effect" where cold air from Siberia picks up a ton of moisture off the Japan Sea, and the whole mass slams into the mountains at the coastline. I have regularly experience 3 or 4 feet in one night, but Buffalo takes the cake. Japan is better outfitted for flooding, since most roads are lined with deep, covered ditches (mini-canals) that take away the runoff quite quickly. Indeed, the ditches are where you shovel the snow from your drive.

One thing that I was surprised to learn was that "thunder snow" is uncommon in North America. Or is it? Tsuruga often has it.
posted by Nevin at 11:56 AM on November 21, 2014

This is amazing. I really want a drone now.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:58 AM on November 21, 2014

Very nice! Man, disposable income is a wonderful thing to have... Plus camera!
posted by DesbaratsDays at 11:58 AM on November 21, 2014

I hope the roofs are built for those loads.

For me, heavy snow is in the category of nice to look at but miserable to live with.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:58 AM on November 21, 2014

"video and music by Jim Grimaldi"

Dude has a 4k drone and an orchestral patch set.
posted by neckro23 at 12:05 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Nevin: "One thing that I was surprised to learn was that "thunder snow" is uncommon in North America. Or is it?"

Pretty uncommon. Once a winter in the US midwest, maybe? (Sometimes a few times, sometimes not at all.) Also the snow makes the thunder quieter, so while during thunderstorms you can hear these big rolling booms for miles on the prairie, during thundersnow you might only hear one or two muffled crashes.

We had 53 1/2 inches over the course of the whole winter last year, and during the last 3-4" storm requiring shoveling I was just like I FUCKING GIVE UP I AM NOT SHOVELING THIS SHIT I AM STAYING INDOORS UNTIL IT MELTS AND I DON'T CARE IF MY CHILDREN MISS SCHOOL because I could not take it anymore. 53" AT ONE TIME would have broken my brain. And also back.

We get blizzards where I live sometimes, maybe a foot or two at once, but if we got four feet at once, let alone six or seven, I would just curl up in a ball and cry until spring or the National Guard came.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:10 PM on November 21, 2014

There are a bunch of videos of the snow in this guy's feed, they're pretty great!

Also, yeah, growing up in New England up to two feet of snow is impressive, three feet is memorable, four feet is impossible, and five feet is thank god we don't live in Buffalo (plus we'd have to root for the Sabres, bleh).
posted by maryr at 12:19 PM on November 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

"Here's what all that snow in Buffalo looks like when you open your front door." (It might take a second to see it.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:19 PM on November 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

That's really cool. I keep thinking "oh, great, another drone video..." but then I watch them and find it interesting. These little drone things are really cool. And even extra cool when they show sublime snow cover neighborhoods.
posted by dios at 12:23 PM on November 21, 2014

One thing that I was surprised to learn was that "thunder snow" is uncommon in North America. Or is it?

We get it once or twice a year in Southern New England, usually part and parcel with a Nor'Easter of some description. This usually just means a few flickers of lightning and cracks of thunder, but very occasionally can mean apocalyptic full-bore electrical storms with heavy, wet snowfall to go with.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:27 PM on November 21, 2014

I imagine the folks in Buffalo feel much like I did last winter...
posted by pjern at 12:27 PM on November 21, 2014

There must be something wrong with me (or I guess it's what happens to a person born and raised in Buffalo) because it makes me sooooo homesick/jealous to see these pictures from back in cold but dry Chicago. I just wanna jump in the snow and lie there. I want to get snowshoes and cross country skis and explore silent, frozen neighborhoods. I realize living it is a different experience but man, I love huge snow events.

The flooding is gonna be bad, though.
posted by misskaz at 12:34 PM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

For those of you thinking "wow, this guy's [really good at] [has lots of money to spend on] his hobby," it's not his hobby.
posted by underthehat at 12:44 PM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, underthehat, the thing that really impressed me is that he's operating that camera by dead reckoning; it's a go-pro which means that it almost assuredly isn't sending him any kind of feed, so all the adjustments to get a better view are based on an operator who knows his equipment and how to frame a shot blind. (the lack of bounce and jiggle can be attributed to a good gimbal, but the getting-the-shot part is all skill.)
posted by quin at 12:55 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Even if he wasn't a pro - Have you seen what a motorcycle costs these days? Do you have any clue what even a small motorboat costs? Are those signs of a spoiled and rich wealthmonger, or a reasonable middle-class hobby? By comparison, quadcopter drones are cheap entertainment, and not sybaritic excess from the monied elite.

Middle class people afford to buy toys that can cost a few thousand dollars as a hobby. Rich people can afford to buy elections as a hobby.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:57 PM on November 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

So glad this is three hours away from me. Great viewing with a nice hot cup of tea...
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:41 PM on November 21, 2014

"honey, quit screwing around with that damned drone and start shoveling"
posted by pyramid termite at 3:05 PM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

All these drone videos just make me think of Johnny LaRue.
posted by benito.strauss at 4:27 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

""honey, quit screwing around with that damned drone and start shoveling""

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-30119410
posted by I-baLL at 4:33 PM on November 21, 2014

I grew up in a place like this that had snowstorms like this and even now I think they shaped my life. In a storm like that.... cars go away, roads disappear, paths that were paths are not paths anymore... the path you make is the path... and it is quiet. And white. There is only the wind maybe, and the sound of your own breath. And not the prospect of that changing soon. What was, is now gone and only a lumpy, bulbous remnant of whatever it was is left - a car, a wall, stones, shrubs, signs, mailboxes, fences, ponds, brooks, driveways, lawns, yards, outdoor furniture, pavements. Of course there were guarantees of no school, not even chores or shoveling until it was over. Usually you stored some firewood too because you knew it was coming. Outside, it was alone, alone, alone.
posted by wallstreet1929 at 5:38 PM on November 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-30119410

my father had a simple solution for this - he had 5 kids and made them do it
posted by pyramid termite at 5:45 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

i've got an even better solution - i live in an apartment and the maintenance people have to do it
posted by pyramid termite at 5:46 PM on November 21, 2014

someone is going to cause an avalanche or other snowfall-related damage flying near large accumulations of fresh snow with one of these things.

There's also this thing called "wind" that can do that. It's blows with a lot more force than anything a quadcopter can produce.
posted by dmd at 6:11 PM on November 21, 2014

I bit my lip and bought a snowblower after of buying our house. A real one, with big knobby tires and a dangerous steel thresher-blade arrangement, who's literature proudly declared it the closest Chinese copy of a Honda cold-weather 4-stroke motor available. My Dad declared that by buying it, we were condemned to a snow-free winter. And so it was, until Nemo happened.

This is climate change. When I was a kid growing up here, we'd have one of these blizzards every three or four years or so. Now it's three or four times a year we get 6" or deeper. Followed immediately by a week or two of 60+º weather, flooding the fuck out of everything. Once a year, we get more than a foot. Unreal.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:22 PM on November 21, 2014

There must be something wrong with me (or I guess it's what happens to a person born and raised in Buffalo) because it makes me sooooo homesick/jealous to see these pictures

That is exactly how I feel. I just left Buffalo two months ago and my heart is sick with longing for it, and for some bizarre reason these pictures have made it worse. When I first got to Ohio, all my coworkers said, "You're moving from Buffalo? Bet you won't miss winter there!" and this week it's been non-stop, "Good thing you moved when you did!" and I just want to shake them and shout NO, NO IT'S NOT, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I'M MISSING?

But I know that would make me sound like a crazy person, so I just do the double-finger-guns and go, "Yep!" and keep quiet my dreams of returning to winter.
posted by none of these will bring disaster at 8:42 PM on November 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

wallstreet1929 : Outside, it was alone, alone, alone.

Living in Wisconsin I get to experience this every couple of years, and more than once I've thought that a post blizzard is, for a lot of people, the last great dangerous frontier that they'll ever get to explore. It's particularly evident when the snow has taken out the power, so you have no phone or internet. Nothing but you and the bleak, silent white.
posted by quin at 8:52 PM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-30119410

That's why I've always heard the heavy wet snow called "heart attack snow". A couple of years ago, I was driving to work after a snow storm and saw what I can only term a tableau that told an entire story: A partly shoveled-out car with a shovel stuck in the snowbank and an ambulance - lights running - parked nearby.

(People in the northeast US have way more than 27 terms for snow and many of them involve obscene language.)
posted by rmd1023 at 1:05 PM on November 23, 2014 [3 favorites]