the city; it appeared white as it came closer. A blast of wind hit the building that caused the floor to move and the glass window to creak, and then the wall of white enveloped the building. It was 11:10 am. On the previous day, the governor of New York had decided to use the National Guard and the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) to help clean up snow in Buffalo, not knowing a blizzard would hit. Some NYSDOT equipment had arrived in Buffalo while the National Guard was not yet mobilized, but a meeting was being held at the Buffalo city garage that morning to coordinate the efforts. Before the meeting finished, Buffalo city plows started to return to the garage due to a lack of visibility; they reported they were unable to see even their own plow blades. By 11:30 am, most workers in the city of Buffalo had been released early, but few made it home. At 11:35 am, lightning was seen in the darkening sky. The white wall of snow reached the airport around 11:30 am. associated with the cold front. Winds increased to , gusting to , with visibility dropping from to 0 where it stayed until 12:50 am the next day. Three airplanes on the tarmac at the Greater Buffalo International Airport in Cheektowaga were waiting to take off when the blizzard hit. One of them idled for five minutes due to the blizzard hitting; this resulted in the nose wheel freezing and preventing it from turning around. It took several hours to bring the three airplanes back to the terminal since they had to do this via radio communication. The limited visibility prevented the pilots from seeing the men on the ground who would normally guide the airplane. Friday afternoon During the four hours after the blizzard hit, the temperature at the Buffalo airport (where the Buffalo office of the NWS is) fell from . Snow built up rapidly, with bumper-high snow being reported by 1:00 pm and high drifts by nightfall in the City of Buffalo. The depth of snow quickly caused many roads to become impassable (within 30 minutes in the part of Buffalo nearest Lake Erie), and the blowing snow caused extremely low visibilities, making travel nearly impossible. In addition to the roads becoming impassable, motorists also had to deal with vehicles breaking down due to the combination