Buffalo resident here. The city advises other cities around the world on rapid snow removal, but this was a whole new level of batshit insane weather, almost all of fueled by wind and lake effect snow. Last month some of us had seven feet of snow dropped on us in a day, but shrugged off as usual. The extreme lack of visibility from the wind (basically a hurricane with snow), which we aren’t prepped for, in narrow streets is what made the situation a nightmare. This isn’t a US thing, New York thing or even Erie County thing, just an alignment of circumstances such as geography (this was a ten mile thin corridor, where anywhere outside of it was relatively untouched), as well as poverty and income inequality issues that made this weekend so deadly.