Snow in Altoona (Philadelphia, Erie, York: house, school, live in)

[anoniem]

Hello, it's me again. A Dutch girl. I have a schoolproject. I have a few questions:

Is it snowing already in Altoona / Pennsylvania? Or when will it snow, are there any expectations?
Do you celebrate christmas? Yes? Do you like it?

Sorry, for the questions. I'll hope you will write me back soon!
I'm very interesed in the United States.

[anoniem]

Why is nobody answering ?

[S6947]

(because I was busy looking up links for you, haha!)

Hello. What kind of project are you doing?

I don't live in Altoona. But I think Altoona has had perhaps one significant snowfall this Fall. Western Pennsylvania can get large snowfalls perhaps as early as October and November, but typically late December and then January through March is when we get most of the snow. It has been a mild Fall, so far.

Here are event calendars for Altoona. It shows Christmas events. Altoona PA Events: Community Calendar
Calendar

AltoonaMirror.com - Altoona, PA | News, Sports, Jobs, Community Information - The Altoona Mirror is their local newspaper

I Love Altoona - Bringing Back Downtown Altoona PA has some history of the town, and some current information.
Altoona, Pennsylvania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Manufacturing Blair County Chamber of Commerce Altoona, PA
^ lists industries and businesses in Blair County. (Pennsylvania is the state, Blair is the county, and Altoona is a town in Blair county.)

This is a map of the counties in the state or Pennsylvania. http://www.digital-topo-maps.com/cou...county-map.gif

Western Pennsylvania was very industrial in the past, but the industries have closed and declined now. Railroads, coal mining, and steel, iron, and other metals-processing were important to the entire region. It was pretty common for each town to have just one or two major manufacturers or industries or employers.
The railroad industry was very important in Altoona. Horseshoe Curve is still a tourist attraction today.
"World Famous" Horseshoe Curve Altoona, PA is a post card picture of it, in the late 1950s.
Largest Round House in the World Altoona, PA is a postcard of the roundhouse in 1909 or so.

The Sheetz company that the article mentions is a company that operates convenience stores that have gasoline and diesel fuel pumps where people can refuel vehicles, and the store has a kitchen that makes fast food, plus the store sells beverages and snack foods and some grocery items. The Sheetz chain seems to be prospering. They are expanding in to other states now.


If you go to this post card seller's site, you can see some old postcards of Altoona that show how it looked in the past. You can use Google and search Altoona and the images tab for some modern pictures.
altoona

Here is a more history History

[S6947]

Put this in Google: railroads altoona photos
and look at images tab, and you'll see pictures of the railroad-related things


Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed

[anoniem]

thank you so much for the information !!!

[anoniem]

I have a geography project. We have to search information about a city. I choose Altoona.
Thank you so much for the information!
Have a nice day

[S6947]

You are welcome! I hope that I didn't do too much of your work for you, and ruin the intent of the project. But I thought you might have problems looking up information because you didn't know what to look for. You still have to boil all of that down into something that gets you a passing grade. :-)

I put a food answer in your other question.

You asked about snow. http://www.altoonamirror.com/page/co...id/544686.html 1950 was a notoriously bad winter with record snowfalls.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_A..._November_1950
I didn't see pictures of Altoona's snow. But Google 1950 snow pittsburgh and look at images. The entire region got snows like that.

In March of 1913, there was a lot of flooding caused by rains combined with big snow melts. You'd have to research more about whether Altoona was affected. But most towns with a river running through them had massive flooding.

That gives you two famous weather extremes for the western Pennsylvania region.

[anoniem]

Haha, no it was super fantastic information !

[S6947]

Urban Dictionary entries indicate that the young people don't highly regard Altoona. :-O
Urban Dictionary: altoona

[S6947]

Here is some odd information:
I found that, improbably enough, old Pennsylvania had a system of canals that spanned the state. (My mother remembered that from her school days.) Before there was a railroad hub at Altoona, there was a canal nearby.
Hollidaysburg Canal Basin Park - Hollidaysburg Canal Basin Park Review - IgoUgo
sites
http://explorepahistory.com/attraction.php?id=1-B-25BC
Allegheny Portage Railroad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia to haul barges


Some of Pennsylvania's roads and railroads follow routes that were old Native American ("Indian") migratory paths. "Kittanning" path ran near Altoona. (Pronounced Kit-tan'-ning.)
Kittanning Path - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Migration Trails In Early Pennsylvania


blaircountyhistory0001 <<< very good link to history


One of my relatives says that the railroad engines used west of Altoona were coal-fired, and then they switched to diesel engines at Altoona to go east and on to Philadelphia and New York. That was in the mid to late 1940s. It was very dirty riding the coal-fired trains, and cinders and soot blew in on passengers and black dust accumulated in the passenger cars, especially in summer when the windows were open. But they still got smoke smells and dust in even in winter with the windows closed. When you traveled the Horseshoe Curve by train, you felt the incline, and the train cars leaned. At that time, Altoona was the largest town in that area. The rest was either farms or forested mountains/hills.

The name Altoona: http://home.earthlink.net/~khsociety...ordmeaning.htm says that it might be derived from a Cherokee ("Indian") word, Allatoona, not the Latin. There is an Allatoona in the state of Georgia. It's not uncommon, in the USA, to have places with names that sound same or similar, and are derived from some American Indian / Native American names or words.
1. Nobody know how Native American names should be spelled, and they just tried to match what they heard, phonetically. People spelled the same sound differently at different times and places. (Shawnee/Pawnee, Wyandot/Guyandotte, Erie/Iroquois, etc. None of that is connected to Altoona, lol. I am just using it so show how Altoona and Allatoona might trace to the same root, a Native American word.)
2. Native American tribes had no concept of land ownership and they migrated with the seasons, and following buffalo or whatever they were hunting. They also got pushed out of Eastern USA lands when white settlers proliferated.





(I love history. You must tell me the name of your town, so I can go look it up. :-D )