Snow and Bradford

[Stoneybroke]

I drove to and from Bradford for 15 years, working for UPB. Sometimes, when I hit Lancer's Corners on Route 6, I felt just like Sargeant Preston of the Yukon. It is a different world up there!

[kibitzJoe]

I also believe it, I also heard it mentioned on the local radio many times.

[scottrpriester]

Originally Posted by kibitzJoe

I also believe it, I also heard it mentioned on the local radio many times.

Watch the Today show when winter comes along, they refer to it all the time.

[Internet Superman]

The coldest place in the lower 48 states is usually International Falls MN. and the second coldest place is Bradford Pa.

The reason for this phenomena is due to the fact that hot air rises and cold air falls. When you live in a deep valley, the cold air falls down into the valley and the warm air cannot reach it as easily as it can up on a ridge.

Gunnison Colorado actually gets colder then Pennsylvania - due to the same fact, but the air is drier there and they sometimes get less precipitation due to the difference in elevation. At other times they get feet of snow and not just inches.

I worked for 2 years for Micale Construction Services Inc and they had a steel shop in Bradford Pa at the edge of the Industrial park, not far from the place that makes the Zippo Lighters and the Case Knives.

One winter we did a job where we put new roofs on the old transmitter buildings up there and built new transmitter buildings for the 911 system.
It was a big deal to country folk, because they never had a 911 system before 1990.

We were working up on Gibbs hill and several other locations that were the highest points of elevation in the area, where you had to go 500 - 1000 feet above the elevation of the towns of Kane and Warren and Bradford.

It was so cold that the antifreeze froze inside of the engine of the van we were working out of. Not that it mattered because the heater in the van did not work. The only source of heat on the job was the muffler on the electric generator that we brought along to run the compressors for the air nailers. The compressors froze too. We hand nailed the shingles and I had bought a pair of orange hunting gloves and by the end of the week there was holes in every finger of the gloves.

If you pulled up the shingles that we put on the roof in 1991 or 1992 - you will see a orange thread under every tar paper nail. That is from my gloves. The nails froze to your fingertips and the only way to seperate the nails from your gloves was to nail it to the roof.

We had to use a flame thrower to get the tar tabs on the shingles to stick to the roof and we had to use the flame thrower in the morning to get the ice and snow off the roof before we put the felt paper and shingles down.

It was by god the coldest place on earth to me and I feel sorry for the fool that had to live there.

It was so durn cold that I bought a pizza at a Domino's in Bradford and the 3 of us tried to eat it on the way home to Dubois one night and by the time we got to Lances Corners - you could hammer a nail with a slice of Pizza - it was that froze in the box and it was sitting on the back seat of the van - beside me, so that was how cold it was back then.

With the exception of the last one or two winters, we have been spoiled by mild winters.

Lake effect snow is snow that falls 20 miles or more away from Lake Erie and not the snow that falls on downtown Erie Pa. In the 60's and 70's, the snow was so bad in Erie that the city did not even bother to plow the side streets and the main streets were sometimes elevated several feet above the road - because the snow and ice was packed so hard that they just kept plowing on top of the last snow and it took until April or May before all the snow melted.

Last year I hunted bears near Marionville PA and they had a couple of inches of snow. The people traveling down from Kane said that they had FEET of snow out in the woods. Even after a 20 mile drive, you could still see that they were wet right up to their waists and that was only because that was all the further they were willing to walk in the snow. When you got into the valleys - the snow got even deeper.

[scottrpriester]

Originally Posted by Internet Superman

Lake effect snow is snow that falls 20 miles or more away from Lake Erie and not the snow that falls on downtown Erie Pa.

Oh my God, that was a painfully long post, and just as many that I've read from you lately, not accurate.

"Lake Effect" snow can be the snow that falls on downtown Erie. If the winds are out of the west, the bands of snow that form out over the lake affect the lake shore communities including the City of Erie. If the wind is out of the NW, which is typically the wind direction during the winter, the bands are carried inland, not necessarily twenty miles out, but starting at the "Allegheny Escarpment" or what folks in Erie County typically refer to as "the hill" or the ridge that Interstate 90 sits on. Interstate 90 is typically the dividing point of getting snow or not getting any, and that's typically ten miles or less from Lake Erie.

And park yourself in front of the television now if you have to, Bradford PA is referred to by many as the coldest spot in the US. THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT IS, but it is often referred to as such.

[North Beach Person]

The reality is that it usually snows a crapload from Erie down to Bradford and points south. It's also cold, sub-zero many mornings with it not getting out of the low 20's during the day.
An example: Christmas Day 1983 in Brookville, -24 at 7AM. My furnace in the 1848 house didn't shut off all night, gas bill for Dec. 83 was $400, for Feb. 84 was just under $600. New baby in Nov. 83, wife and I both unemployed, me for over a year except for the odd day here and there, no insurance. You now know why Mar. 84 found me with a job in MD.