Snow begins as a rumor in Buffalo, NY

All they've been talking about for days is the big snow storm, it's finally here and right now it's no different then any other year.... 20"s they say, everyone here says we'll see. All the build up - but will it live up to it? The past couple of days made me think of the prologue to a book I read this summer, "The Last Fine Time." It's the story of Buffalo toward the end of it's heyday - but the prologue is present day, and nothing I have ever seen describes the build up to a snow storm quite like it....

"Snow begins as a rumor in Buffalo, New York. The local television newscasters report it at noon, six, and eleven .To predict the possible path of winter's first storm, weatherpersons use live radar maps and pointers and an exchange of sober looks with the camera. Radio stations - even hard-rock channels - mention the on coming snow at least once every five minutes throughout the day. .... But it is the mood that makes a snowstorm, and the mood in Buffalo begins as a rumor. The elderly put their heads together and fret...Cashiers at the enormous Bell's (Bell's is no more - we'll exchange this for Tops) and Wegman's supermarket's around town swap weather gossip with their customers over the bar code readers at every checkout aisle...The girl's at Poise N' Ivy, a fashion boutique on Main Street in Williamsville, talk about the snow with no less fervor and foreboding than do the boys next door at Bert Sweeney Men's Clothing or the skeleton crews down at the grain elevators beside the Buffalo harbor or the carpenters raising condominiums and luxury homes in what used to be woods along Transit Road all the way out to Lockport. From their glassed-in showrooms on Transit Road itself, auto-salesmen watch the weather laying itself in from the west, the clouds like a field of gray tumuli.."

The prologue is about 9 pages, so I won't go on - but you get the idea. It's all everyone talks about, it's the only thing happening...and then a couple days later. "We've had worse - that was nothing..."