To any person who has been stuck on the thruway near Buffalo in a blizzard, I feel for you.   This year there wasn’t a lot of snow.  But for some reason I was thinking about blizzards.

It was Thanksgiving week, 2000. We were making the trek out west to see family in western NY and beyond with our 3 kids (youngest was 2 at the time). We heard that it was going to snow in Buffalo and didn’t think anything of it. My wife grew up out that way and my wife and I went to college in western NY. We were seasoned in Buffalo snow.

Driving from the east on the thruway (I 90) all the way up to Rochester there was nothing, not a flake. But then west of Rochester we saw it — it was a wall of grey. Hitting it was an instant white out. We slowed down to about 30, yet kept going with everyone else.  I got behind a trucker, as it was easy to see it in the white out.   If he was going off the road, so was I.     As we passed the cars in ditches, I got concerned;  this storm wasn’t suppose to be this bad.

We marched on, wanting to get past the worse of it, as this had to be a fluke white out.   There was clear skies just on the other side of Buffalo, right? (I prayed that was the case).    

The best decision we made was to get off at the Clarence service station, just 8 miles from the Buffalo toll plaza, to fill up on gas.  I also had to unclench my fist from the hour of “white knuckle” driving. Right when we got back on the highway, everything came to a halt. We just figured it was an accident up head;   another car off in a ditch maybe?  

An hour of waiting, we turned to the NY thruway emergency station to get some information. George Pataki PSA was continuously playing “New York State is a great place in the winter time”; useless.

About 2 hours stopped, the announcement finally changed “New York State Thruway west of Rochester is closed”. Um, thanks. 

Thankfully, we were about a 1/4 mile from the service station, so we could go back and use the facilities. The service station was jammed with people and Burger King was giving away free food to the stranded people; kudos to their manager. The guy in the car behind us was only going one exit to get home from work and didn’t have a coat. We gave him some of our snacks.

As the night progressed with us and hundreds of other stranded cars, I would run the car — every so often — to warm it up; good thing I filled up with gas.

Morning came and there was still no movement and no news.

13 hours from the time we stopped on the thruway, we had finally had movement. They cleared out a U-turn up ahead of us and we were sent back east. We got off at the next exit, 15 miles east of of our snow entombment, and took back roads on to our destination. So the usual 5 hour trip to the in-laws in Western part of NY took 23 hours.

And THAT is why we no longer travel by car to see family during winter holidays.