I am a proud Buffalonian!
Now, you may be familiar with Buffalo's reputation when it comes to a certain form of winter precipitation. What many people don't realize though, is that other places get WAY more total snow than we do over the course of the winter. We just get this snow capital title because we get all our snow at once.
What do I mean? Well, let's say Buffalo gets 8 feet of snow in a year, and City A gets 12 feet a year. City A might get 1-2 inches of snow (which is basically nothing) every other day for four months through the winter. Buffalo? Buffalo will get snow 5 days... and at least two of those days we're getting like four feet and then it won't snow for a month.
But then sometimes... sometimes we'll get 4 of those 8 feet in one weekend. And sometimes it happens over Christmas weekend and everyone is crabby because their holidays are ruined and then they have to be done over the next weekend and everything is thrown into absolute bedlam and it's a shit show.
And if it's a white out blizzard? No one can clear the snow as it's falling because they can't see. How bad is a white out? Well... pictured below was my view out the back door. And then my view once the wind started to kick up. I circled one car for reference, but please notice (or... don't notice?) how you can't see the other car at all. This was Friday night, which was the worst of the wind. Then below these is when I was finally able to get out on Saturday. Couldn't open the door (that's the door where I took those two photos), but luckily I could get out through the garage.
Next is a view of the street, and you can see that the wind is about to start up again, as it's getting blurry in the distance. Oh, and the wind? It was the equivalent of a category 1 hurricane (which is 74mph). The wind at the airport was registering 72 - and I live 2.5 miles from the airport. So imagine how hard packed that snow was after being under that wind pressure.
Finally, the view of the front of the house. Somewhere under that is a front porch, which took me from Sunday until Wednesday afternoon to dig out (and I had to dig out because it was pushing on the door. The glass was actually starting to bow into the house and I was not about to have that exploding.
So... what I'm saying is that I spent my Christmas alternately stuck in the house and outside clearing snow. The snowblower can only do so much, luckily my almost brother-in-law came by with his Bobcat machine and cleared quite a bit of that snow drift, or I never would have made it. When I wasn't doing that, I was basically sleeping. Once we finally got out, I managed to get to boyfriend's, and then we spent the next few days attending makeup Christmas dinners, getting presents to all our nieces and nephews.
I can't be too upset about it though. Yes, I was stuck home, but I had heat, food, water, electricity, and I was actually IN the house. So many people got trapped in their cars, buried in snow. There were people who got lost just walking to their cars after work because of the white outs. There were people who lost heat, power, for the whole weekend, during subzero temps. People lost their lives. Luckily there were some angels out there, like Sha’Kyra Autry, who took in a man she found out in the snow and used social media to help get him to the hospital.
But then, the temps went to almost 50 over New Year weekend, melted a lot of things (of course, flooding is a risk in some places now), and we all settled in for football. There was a lot riding on the Bills-Bengals game. Fighting for that top AFC seed (which I wanted truly for financial reasons - Top seed gets a first round bye (for non sports fans, the team that finishes first in the conference gets to skip the first round of the playoffs, takes that week off, and goes right to the second round), which means that's one less playoff game I'd have to pay for. Season tickets aren't cheap, playoff tickets aren't any better. My playoff tickets for 3 games cost almost the same as the whole season (the difference is literally $14), but where I have nine months to pay the seasons, I have to pay the playoff ones in three weeks.
So here we are, our 6th prime time game of the season... and less than 15 minutes into the game, everyone's world was as frozen as our city had been the week before, as we watched Damar Hamlin fall to the ground. When I say the aftermath was the longest and most frustrating hour of my life...
But I'll tell you what you might not know. BillsMafia is known for our charity and generosity. New Year's Eve, 2017, the Bengals were down to the Ravens, 27-24, Bengals had the ball, 4th and 12, less than a minute to the game, Andy Dalton sends an absolute bullet to Tyler Boyd, who gets the TD, knocks the Ravens out of the playoffs and secures a spot for the Bills. BillsMafia donates $400,000+ to Dalton's foundation. When Josh Allen's grandmother passed away, we raised over a million for Oishei Hospital. When Lamar Jackson left the game with a concussion (and then we beat the out of the Ravens out of the playoffs), we raised over $450,000 for his foundation. Tua Tagovailoa is obviously concussed during the game the Dolphins beat us? Cool. Here's money for your foundation. The refs are obviously in need of help because they can see blatant fouls? Here's some money for Visually Impaired Advancement (VIA) of Western New York.
One of our players gets hurt? Fundraising!
And we certainly didn't stop now. Damar Hamlin's Chasing Ms was at $100,000 as of Monday night. Today, Wednesday afternoon, it's 6.5 million. Chasing Ms stands for Chasing Millions, I believe the chase is over. But the best part is how many others from all around the world have followed our lead. Of course, some NFL-centric donors have helped. Shannon Sharpe, Davante Adams, Tom Brady, the Colts, the Commanders, the Texans, Matt Stafford, Russell Wilson,the Patriots, but my favorite donor? Chris Jericho.