BUFFALO, N.Y. — While the lake effect storm over the weekend wasn't the worst inch, or 18, that Buffalo has ever seen, it was enough of a reminder that the winter season is back in Western New York.
The state sent dozens of pieces of additional equipment to help public works crews handle the lake effect band dropping its latest album on the area.
One piece of equipment that wasn't working, however, was the Buffalo snow plow map.
2 On Your Side checked the map late Saturday night to see which regions of South Buffalo had been treated and where crews were focusing their efforts. But the map was blank.
WGRZ reached out to city officials to ask about the lack of data being sent to the snow plow map and DPW Commissioner Nate Marton confirmed that the city never activated it for the storm.
"We had the map down ahead of this storm, because once we kind of got into it, it was so localized, two thirds of the city, had no snow," Commissioner Marton said. "So no real need for snow removal map there."
Marton went on to say that the majority of the snow fighting equipment, plus additional resources from the state, were in South Buffalo ahead of the storm.
The additional equipment, which isn't trackable with the system the city uses for the map, was another reason why the city never activated the map.
"The decision of not having that visible, just from a data perspective, really wasn't going to show how much equipment we had on the streets," Marton said.
WGRZ crews observed plow crews working throughout South Buffalo late Saturday night, and into the early hours of Sunday morning.
By daybreak Sunday, most of the main roads in South Buffalo were plowed down to the pavement, and crews were working on secondary streets.
Marton said the city is working on ways to easily track third party crews with their system.
"We understand that there's a way that we can get a couple modules and turn some cell phone equipment on which the cell phones then would feed into our map," Marton said.
However, a low-tech solution of the third party contractors reporting to dispatch when they clear a street, and someone manually updating the map seems like an obvious solution.
Commissioner Marton believes that creates more work and problems than it solves.
"It ends up being a pretty constant call in, so you almost need someone manually, then clicking each street by street, fielding phone calls or fielding radio calls," Marton said. "That would be something we could explore, but the manpower and how smooth that turns on, it would be a little bit of a challenge."
With more snow in the forecast for this week, a system that will impact the whole city, the DPW plans to have the map activated for the public to use.
"We'll certainly have that map turned on for clarity purposes," Marton said. "Nothing, nothing to hide here, we want visibility into what we're doing, and we want the community to see it."