First Alert Weather: Lake effect snow impacts travel west this weekend, but looking good heading east

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The long-duration, high-impact lake effect event in western New York is underway, but this will have very minimal impacts across Rochester and the Finger Lakes. The heaviest snow will take aim at southern Erie County, Wyoming County, and Chautauqua County through Monday morning. Some flakes and snow showers will be flying across the Finger Lakes and south of the Thruway into Saturday morning, before pushing back south. Accumulation will be minor, with a coating of an inch or so on the ground. Outside of this, we’ll see some sunshine and a brisk wind closer to Rochester and our northern tier counties for Saturday and most of Sunday.

If you are traveling west along the Thruway from Buffalo to the PA border and into Ohio, you’ll want to check ahead of time, as there may be slowdowns or Thruway closures into Monday morning. If you’re going to the Bills game on Sunday night, you should be largely okay coming from Rochester, but if you have friends or family coming from south of the stadium, they will likely run into some issues.

A wind shift Sunday night will draw some Lake Ontario snow into the Rochester region early next week, with likely our first measurable snowfall on the order of a coating to an inch or two into Monday. But snow chances will stick around for much of next week with some minor lake effect combined with some light area-wide snow. We’ll also have another blast of even colder air late next week, dropping our high temperatures into the 20s. So, winter has finally arrived.