As another winter approaches, communities across New York state are taking a look at preparations for extreme conditions.
One of the hardest hit cities in Buffalo even brought in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and an array of subject matter experts after being rocked by the November storm and deadly Christmas blizzard.
Spectrum News 1 goes inside this executive training and how communities across the state can learn from this as well.
"This was four hours of really tough questions," the Center for Homeland Defense and Security facilitator Clark Kimerer said, kicking off the post-training press conference.
"It is unlike anything this community has ever experienced weather-wise," Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown added to describe the magnitude of those four hours.
After the epic weather events Western New York saw last year, it was an easy ask for Buffalo city officials to bring in the likes of federal agencies and folks like Kimerer.
"We did a lot of research. We found a lot of things to present to them by way of scenarios,” said Kimerer. “It was a very, very rigorous and detailed examination of their preparedness.”
That training included officials from Buffalo, Erie County and the state of New York playing out scenarios that were cited as “1.5 times the magnitude of the December Blizzard.”
"Certain conditions are common," he added. "And certainly those that you saw in December of 2022 really constitute all the conditions that we would call catastrophic."
The biggest lesson from those presenting?
"We have done, as Clark said, 600 or more of these kinds of executive education seminars and there are common themes for jurisdictions across the country," noted the center's crisis communications expert, Julie Parker. "You've got to have your internal communications set and understand who their players are to effectively be able to communicate."
Which is something Brown and the City of Buffalo say they're going to be committing to as the temperature drops and another round of winter approaches.
"Saying that, ‘this will be a life-threatening storm. If you go out, you could die in this storm,’" Brown said. "Being very specific with the language in terms of the weather condition that we are going to be dealing with, so the public takes it seriously."
"This was a very helpful exercise for us in our community to improve on how we will respond to extreme weather events in the future," he added.
During the training, everyone got another clear look at the NYU blizzard report and combed over news media reports, particularly from the Christmas blizzard. The City of Buffalo, Erie County and New York state could be looking to partner with outlets even more to get the word out for potential extreme weather events.