The Great Labor Day WIND STORM!

Central New Yorkers got a taste of what upstaters went through during the Great Ice Storm of '98, when early Labor Day morning, 1998, a ferocious wind storm swept across the region, knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes across Central New York and killing two people at the State Fair on its concluding day. Straight-line winds gusting to 115 miles per hour uprooted trees, caved in buildings, and toppled tractor trailers during a 10-minute maelstrom that left city streets looking like a landing-site in a logging operation. At the height of the storm, the night sky blazed with a blinding intensity as a flurry of lightning bolts, numbering more than 100 per minute, raged across the sky. A national state-of-emergency was declared throughout the region, and nightly curfews were enforced to assist in the cleanup. Seven hundred National Guardsmen from the 27th brigade were deployed to assist in the cleanup, and the region was declared eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance.

Storm cleanup pictures

Oakwood Cemetery
(Before and after the storm pictures)

North Country