Buffalo’s Summer Snow Is Officially Here In Western New York

If there is one thing we know very well here in Western New York it is snow. And we do get a lot of it, even in the summertime.

Sure when the weather warms up, it is not the traditional snow that is cold and wet covering Western New York but it is another kind of white stuff. The Cottonwood seed.

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Yes, now is the time that the Cottonwood Trees across Western New York to start sending out their seeds and those see look a lot like big fluffy snowflakes.

I took this picture of my neighbor's yard in Hamburg and it looks like he got a dusting of snow in June, but in fact, it is just cottonwood seeds from all the neighborhood trees.

You can expect to see this "Buffalo Summer Snow" for the next 3 to 4 weeks. According to the USDA Forest Service's website on trees, the seeds are released for 4-6 weeks.

Eastern cottonwood is a prolific seeder and produces large seed crops annually. Seed dispersal occurs approximately 1-2 months after flowering in the northern part of its range and continues for well over a month.

The reason it looks like a snowstorm has hit Western New York is that a single cottonwood tree can a single release more than 25 million seeds. So if you have 10-50 trees in your neighborhood, that is a lot of seeds being sent all over town.