Lora Larkin, who just last year purchased the Osceola Hotel in upstate New York’s Tug Hill region, was thrilled to hear that she might get snowed in last week.
Her bar and restaurant is a popular stop for snowmobilers riding through, but there haven’t been too many this year.
“It’s been a light snow year, and when we do get it, it just turns around and melts like within a week,” Larkin said. “This is actually the first decent snowfall that we’ve had for the season.”
When meteorologists call for a snowstorm, with blustering winds or several inches of snowfall, most New Yorkers let out a collective sigh.
But folks who live in the Tug Hill region, a part of upstate New York nestled between Lake Ontario and the Adirondacks, are different. They get slammed with the most snowfall in the state most years, but they don’t shake their heads at severe forecasts.
They get excited.
The USA TODAY Network New York spent the end of last week in the region, visiting with residents and tourists as they hunkered down for what was expected to be the biggest snowstorm of the year.
The residents there sit down without breaking eye contact with their televisions, blindly reaching for remotes to better hear just how many inches they’re going to get. They call their neighbors, their children and their friends, comparing forecasts and making plans.
Leona Chereshnoski, an Osceola, Lewis County, native who runs a bed and breakfast out of her childhood home, said the two-to-three feet of snowfall Tug Hill got last weekend was nothing special compared to other storms.
But, she said, two or three feet was long overdue. So far this winter, Osceola has only gotten about 178 inches, including last week’s storm.
On average, she said they’ll get around 300 inches by the end of March. (That’s 25 feet in a season; Anchorage, Alaska, only gets 75 inches a year.)
For this region, a mild winter like this one is no good.
“It’s bad for business,” Chereshnoski said. “If you’re up here and you have a mortgage, two bad winters could kill you. You couldn’t take much more than that.”
Snow draws excitement and visitors
Mark Paulino drove up from his home in New Jersey last Wednesday to snowshoe in Osceola for a few days after the storm. He said he’d been waiting for the right time, and after watching the weather report he decided to take the rest of the week off work.
Much to Paulino’s delight, more than a foot of snow had fallen between Wednesday evening when he arrived at Chereshnoski’s bed and breakfast and Thursday afternoon. He strapped on his green snowshoes, bundled up and got out his phone to take with him on his hike.
He had several playlists and more than 800 songs loaded onto his phone — all of them dedicated to winter. Winter, he said, is his favorite season by far.
“That magical feeling you get as a child when you see it’s snowing? I still have it, and it’s much more intense,” Paulino said. “Your interests and your passions — you don’t pick them. They pick you.”
Hosting guests like Paulino keeps Chereshnoski plenty busy, she said. Chereshnoski, 76, has run the bed and breakfast for about 20 years, taking over after her mother passed away in 1999.
She’s also involved in a handful of hobbies that fill her calendar — she has been a member of the New York State Old Tyme Fiddlers’ Association for decades, serves as secretary of the Osceola Snowmobile Association and is the longest-serving commissioner for the Tug Hill Commission. On top of all that, she works part-time as director of the Osceola Public Library.
Named after her grandfather’s moniker, Old Lard’s Barn Bed and Breakfast has four bedrooms in the house as well as two “efficiency units” in a separate building on the property.
It’s located just five miles east of Redfield, the Oswego County town that in many years past has been honored with the title of snowiest place in New York.
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Chereshnoski’s 50-acre lot is a popular spot for snowmobilers, especially since a public snowmobiling trail cuts right through her backyard.
Over the years her stellar breakfast pancakes have taken on a reputation of their own across town.
Guests coming to enjoy the snow enable her to pay the taxes on her property. But with such little snow this year, she said she’s fortunate her mortgage was paid off long ago.
“It’s very hard on the businesses up here,” she said. “If you’ve got a business and you’re trying to run it and there’s no snow, then there’s nobody coming. … It happens a lot. If you drive around Tug Hill, you’ll see a lot of businesses for sale.”
At the last census, Osceola recorded a minuscule 229 residents, and Chereshnoski expects it to be much less than that after this year’s updated count.
Most full-time residents work government jobs — for the post office, the schools, the municipal buildings — though some do travel “off the hill” for work.
Chereshnoski said she’ll head out once a week and drive 25 or 30 miles to do her grocery shopping. There are things like special, thicker bacon and better bread for French toast that she can’t get at the corner store near her home.
The roads that are plowed but still covered with a thick layer of snow and sand don’t scare her. She can barrel out through a snowbank at the end of her driveway and swing her Subaru into the road with a fearless grace.
Her car doesn’t have 4-wheel drive, and no, she doesn’t ever plan on driving a car that has it. She doesn’t need it.
“I make out fine. The kids were really upset when I bought the car, when they found out I didn’t have four wheel drive,” she said, smirking. “After you’ve done it for 60-some years, it’s not a big deal. … But they don’t worry. They know I don’t take chances.”
Volunteer groomers blaze the trail
By Friday afternoon, restaurants like the Cedar Pine restaurant and bar in Osceola had more snowmobiles than cars in the parking lot — a good sign for business owners in the area.
Dave Kowell, vice president of the Osceola Snowmobile Association, made sure to watch the weather reports closely last week. Kowell is also the head groomer, driving up from his home in Syracuse several times a week to groom the club’s 29 miles of trails.
On Friday evening, he and another groomer rode tandem — meaning one machine follows the other along the trails, rather than each heading off in separate directions — as a precaution after all the snowfall.
“Believe it or not, these machines do have their limitations,” Kowell said. One can pull the other out if they happen to slip off the trail and into a ditch or snowbank, and two groomers can do better work when combing though some of the wider sections.
Driving through winding trails, snow-covered tree limbs thwacked against the windshield and gunked up windshield wipers. Snowmobilers pulled off to the side to let the groomers pass, waving and giving thumbs up to the drivers.
At a turnaround point, Kowell hopped out of the groomer and used a handheld propane torch to heat up the wipers enough to melt the ice off.
Grooming trails can be challenging, and finding people to volunteer their time to do it is even more so, said Kowell, 35.
When people first get interested in the idea, they think it’s like going for a joy ride — until they realize they can’t bring beer, they can’t goof off and they won’t get paid to do it.
But without groomers to keep the trails pristine, Kowell said, the snowmobilers who bring business to towns like Osceola and Redfield will find somewhere else to ride. Someone has to do the work.
“To be a groomer, you have to be an optimist,” Kowell said, pausing. “And a scientist, a meteorologist, an operator and a mechanic. To do this, you have to want to do it.”
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‘We’ve waited all winter long for this’
A lot of people who live year-round in Tug Hill like the snow — but Carolyn Yerdon takes that passion to a whole new level.
Yerdon, a school teacher who moonlights as an observer for the National Weather Service (NWS), collects data in her North Redfield backyard and sends in snow totals to the NWS. She also gets outrageously happy when it snows, and she shares her excitement on social media.
She tries to get creative with her posts, making signs or dressing up to show how much snow they’ve gotten.
When her school was out for winter break in mid-February, she put on shorts, flip flops and a tank top and took a photo of herself sitting in a sled with a drink in her hand.
“‘ONLY 143.7″ (to compare our record year 96/97 we were at 345.5″ at this point) But hey gotta ‘Enjoy what you get and don’t throw a fit’ especially when dealing with Mother Nature!” she wrote on Twitter.
ONLY 143.7″ (to compare our record year 96/97 we were at 345.5″ at this point” But hey gotta “Enjoy what you get and don’t throw a fit” especially when dealing with Mother Nature! pic.twitter.com/HdMoumH1f5
— Carolyn Yerdon (@CYerdon) February 17, 2020
On Thursday, as snow fell heavily around her, she set up her small digital camera on an upside-down 5-gallon bucket and jumped off of a snowbank several times, trying to get the shot using her self-timer.
“Most of my ideas just pop into my head, and I find them absolutely ridiculously funny,” Yerdon said. “A majority of my photos are taken with self-timers, so I am by myself. … But now with social media, I’ve found how many people enjoy it is just amazing to me.”
She knows not everyone shares her enthusiasm.
Even people who come up for the weekend to spend time in the snow have moved to Tug Hill and later moved away, unable to handle the rural landscape, heavy snow and the lifestyle changes that come with it.
But standing in her backyard in knee-deep snow with the wind whipping thick, fluffy flakes sideways, Yerdon was in her element.
Thursday also happened to be her birthday, and when school was canceled that morning, it became the first time she’s ever had a snow day on her birthday.
“We’ve waited all winter long for this. And I know that a lot of people don’t love this, but I really do,” Yerdon said. “I’m proud of my town and this little thing called snow that put us on the map.”
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Georgie Silvarole is a backpack reporter for the USA TODAY Network New York State Team. You can reach her by email at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter @gsilvarole.
This article originally appeared on New York State Team: New York Tug Hill: What happened in snowiest spot in the state