Erie County hiring researchers to develop new blizzard rating scale

Primary among them is that the word “blizzard” or even “once-in-a-generation blizzard” doesn’t mean much to weather-hardened Western New Yorkers. Despite officials taking to social media about the life-threatening risks of the Christmas week blizzard and holding daily updates, 46 county residents died. Many died of exposure or were stranded in their cars.

So Erie County wants to find a way to rate blizzards and communicate that rating to the public effectively, in a way everyone can understand. The county is poised to spend $350,000 over 18 months to accomplish this with help from the State University at Albany, home of the Center for Excellence for Weather and Climate Analytics.

Local officials and university researchers hope the development of a blizzard rating scale is something that would be further tweaked and adopted statewide or even farther.

“We believe if there was a scale, such as a hurricane scale or a scale similar to tornadoes, that it would certainly send a message to the public that this storm that is upcoming is significant and can kill you,” said County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

Right now, there is no blizzard rating scale. A winter storm is called a blizzard if it features a large amount of snow, sustained winds of more than 35 mph and visibility of less than a quarter mile for at least three hours. While there have been multiple blizzards during Poloncarz’s time as county executive, few recollect most of them because they were relatively short-lived.

None matched the December blizzard where there were sustained winds of more than 60 mph and less than 10 feet of visibility for three days, Poloncarz said.

Hurricanes have the five-category Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Tornadoes have the five-level Enhanced Fujita Scale. Earthquakes have seismic magnitude…