Great Lakes Cities

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

It makes me wonder which of the big, growing metros of today will be the Buffalos of tomorrow?

New Orleans is the obvious one. In some ways New Orleans already looked more like a Rust Belt city in the postwar than a Sun Belt city, despite being in the Sun Belt region.

[edale]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

New Orleans is the obvious one. In some ways New Orleans already looked more like a Rust Belt city in the postwar than a Sun Belt city, despite being in the Sun Belt region.

I wouldn't call New Orleans a big growing metro though. It's growing, yes, but it's still smaller than it was in 2000, and it definitely doesn't have the same boomtown vibe of an Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, etc.

I could see Nashville falling off in coming decades. It seems to lack the infrastructure to grow much more, and there doesn't really seem to be much of a reason for its growth other than it being the trendy destination du jour. Once the bachelorette party scene decamps for the next trendy destination, what is Nashville left with?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Cape Cod is pretty unique in that it's one of the only cold weather locales in the U.S. that sits to the east of a sizeable portion of saltwater. The prevailing winds dictate that most of the air will move out over the ocean and not hit land again. Even so, looking at this map you can see that winds moving over Lake Erie travel significantly farther before hitting land than they would at Cape Cod. That distance + higher temperature differential is the difference between a light dusting in Cape Cod and a foot of snow in Buffalo.

Are those wintertime prevailing winds?

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by isaidso

I'm firmly in the camp that the US Great Lakes region will, over the long term, rebound. ...
Perhaps wishful thinking due to the border but my hope is that the GO Lakeshore West rail line will one day extend from Niagara Falls to Buffalo. It would be a boon for Buffalo imo. Maybe extending the line to Fort Erie (Ontario) is the medium term solution. Buffalonians could just hop across the river to the station.

The Great Lakes region will rebound, and climate change will work in the region's favor. Duluth, in particular on Lake Superior is supposed to be the area least affected according to future climate projections from a few years ago anyway.

As for GO Train, Fort Erie is far too small for an extension. It's only around 35,000 people spread across a large area and too costly to get rail down near the Buffalo border to a stop that wouldn't get too much use.
I just want all day GO train to Niagara with the 4 stops near the QEW (St. Catharines' station a bit further away) completed ASAP. Metrolinx seems to be taking their sweet time.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Acajack

In Ontario and Quebec especially, microbreweries have taken over a significant share of the beer market. To the point where I'd say there aren't really provincially dominant or even regionally dominant beers anymore.

Bud Light has become a dominant brand in Ontario. The distinctive blue cans are found everywhere. In the last 20 years Bud Light has probably surpassed every major macro brand in Ontario, even as the craft beer revolution has occurred. Hence why the John Labatt Centre in Labatt's own home London is now Budweiser Gardens as forumer/mod MolsonExport stated.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Wigs

The Great Lakes region will rebound, and climate change will work in the area's favor. Duluth, in particular on Lake Superior is supposed to be the area least affected according to future climate projections from a few years ago anyway.

As for GO Train, Fort Erie is far too small for an extension. It's only around 35,000 people spread across a large area and too costly to get rail down near the Buffalo border to a stop that wouldn't get too much use.
I just want all day GO train to Niagara with the 4 stops near the QEW completed ASAP. Metrolinx seems to be taking their sweet time.

I assume if they were going to extend to Buffalo, the train would cross the border at NF and have a stop in NF, NY and maybe Tonawanda before going down to Buffy. I believe that's the route the "Maple Leaf" already takes and wouldn't require much new infrastructure other than maybe some track and platform upgrades.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

It makes me wonder which of the big, growing metros of today will be the Buffalos of tomorrow?

Maybe Phoenix? There is no obvious reason for a 5 million inh. metro area to be located in that place. They were already hit badly by 2008 crisis, with a big slowdown, but I guess it might fall even more in the future. And of course, they have extreme weather as well.

If we consider Inland Empire a separate metro area, they might face issues in the future as well, specially with Los Angeles area stopping growing altogether.

And the Southern Sun Belt cities, they will eventually face competition between them, with some falling behind.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by edale

I wouldn't call New Orleans a big growing metro though. It's growing, yes, but it's still smaller than it was in 2000, and it definitely doesn't have the same boomtown vibe of an Austin, Nashville, Charlotte, etc.

True. It was just the most obvious place in that region that seems highly likely to go into prolonged decline.

Originally Posted by edale

I could see Nashville falling off in coming decades. It seems to lack the infrastructure to grow much more, and there doesn't really seem to be much of a reason for its growth other than it being the trendy destination du jour. Once the bachelorette party scene decamps for the next trendy destination, what is Nashville left with?

Nashville has a lot of room to grow, though. It has nearly as much land as Houston, but less than 1/3rd of the population. It's also the state capital, so I don't think it's likely to experience an economic shock like Buffalo's experience with the collapse of steel. Houston seems most likely to experience an economic shock, but it's a huge city and bigger cities usually figure out a way to reinvent themselves after a shock.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I assume if they were going to extend to Buffalo, the train would cross the border at NF and have a stop in NF, NY and maybe Tonawanda before going down to Buffy. I believe that's the route the "Maple Leaf" already takes and wouldn't require much new infrastructure other than maybe some track and platform upgrades.

If they Metrolinx/GO somehow made a deal with Amtrak to cross the border that would be the route. Don't see it happening in my lifetime and I'll (hopefully) be around for another 4 decades

iheartthed, it's interesting that Buffalo was an epicenter of the Rust Belt manufacturing collapse and now the Metro has ~6,000 more manufacturing jobs in Q4 2023 than the (non pandemic) bottom in 2009 (BLS numbers). Tesla, for example has a plant (on the former Republic Steel site) making supercharger components among doing other low level tasks (data annotation) and employs somewhere around 1,800.

[eschaton]

The logical Sun Belt bust areas are retiree-heavy, like much of Florida.

The reason is pretty simple: The number of retirees is gonna peak soon. There's just way fewer Gen Xers than Boomers. Actually, it may have already peaked - I believe the peak birth year was some time between 1957 and 1959. There's way less people who were born in the 1960s and 1970s. So retiree havens will have to try and sop up a higher proportion of smaller birth cohorts just to hold pace, never mind continuing to grow.

As these zones often have very poor regional economies beyond what caters to retirees, they could pretty quickly head into substantive economic decline, with rust-belt like population trends, from the 2030s to the 2050s.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Cape Cod is pretty unique in that it's one of the only cold weather locales in the U.S. that sits to the east of a sizeable portion of saltwater. The prevailing winds dictate that most of the air will move out over the ocean and not hit land again. Even so, looking at this map you can see that winds moving over Lake Erie travel significantly farther before hitting land than they would at Cape Cod. That distance + higher temperature differential is the difference between a light dusting in Cape Cod and a foot of snow in Buffalo.

Ocean effect snowfalls on Cape Cod are due to cold maritime winds from the N and NE that travel long distances over ocean waters and then hit the Cape.

Lake effect snowfall hitting Buffalo and the western/southwestern shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario are derived from dry, frigid continental winds that pick up a lot more moisture from the warm lake waters.

Air mass saturation, temperature differential, wind direction (which distance is a function of), and physical geography (elevation) are the contributing factors to lake effect snowfall amounts, which are highly variable even within a relatively small area.

For Buffalo proper to get dumped on, the wind conditions have to be right... very cold air from the NNW combined with prevailing winds out of the west aim precip emanating from Huron, Georgian Bay, part of Erie, and the western portion of Ontaio all right at Buffalo. Generally, the highest snowfall totals are seen in the higher elevation areas southeast of Buffalo in southern Erie County NY, Chautauqua County NY, and southern and southeastern Erie County PA.





Hence, the higher elevation areas denoted by red average around 100-150 inches of snow annually; with the western plateau of the Adirondacks in dark red averaging around 200 inches

[Wigs]

Look at poor Watertown, NY at the eastern end of Lake Ontario in the dark red. They really get walloped!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Bud Light has become a dominant brand in Ontario. The distinctive blue cans are found everywhere. In the last 20 years Bud Light has probably surpassed every major macro brand in Ontario, even as the craft beer revolution has occurred. Hence why the John Labatt Centre in Labatt's own home London is now Budweiser Gardens as forumer/mod MolsonExport stated.

My condolences.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Look at poor Watertown, NY at the eastern end of Lake Ontario in the dark red. They really get walloped!

There is a stretch on Interstate 81 between Watertown and Syracuse where typically in winter the snowbanks on the roadside suddenly rise from about ankle height to the middle of your car's doors. Then after about half an hour they go back down to ankle height.

It's a stretch that's mostly in the woods (though there are towns beyond the trees) so my kids when they were little used to call it the enchanted forest due to the branches all being so heavily laden with sparkling snow.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by Acajack

My condolences.

It shows that the culture wars in the US with that particular brand last year had little to no effect on Ontarians beer drinking habits.

Originally Posted by Acajack

There is a stretch on Interstate 81 between Watertown and Syracuse...

...so my kids when they were little used to call it the enchanted forest due to the branches all being so heavily laden with sparkling snow.

Beautiful to look at, if you don't live in the area and have to constantly shovel, snowblow, plow it!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Wigs

It shows that the culture wars in the US with that particular brand last year had little to no effect on Ontarians beer drinking habits.

I wasn't referring to the culture wars, but to the quality of the beer!

[mrnyc]

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there’s no surf in cleveland usa — 
 
oh wait, yes there is —

 
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzJLn...gzM2d1OGNsZWx1
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[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Beautiful to look at, if you don't live in the area and have to constantly shovel, snowblow, plow it!

Snowblowing is actually pretty fun!

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by isaidso

It never occurred to me that Cape Cod would have the same phenomenon as Lake Effect Snow but it makes sense. Why would cold water mean less snow though?

Not much temperature change between water and air. It can depend; sometimes the snow can be nothing, like just squalls all day, and sometimes it's a foot or more, like typical lake effect snow.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Really cool map!

Despite the popular misconception that Chicago is buried under multiple feet of snow for 9 months a year, this city really doesn't doesn't get an inordinate amount of snow, largely because it's position at the very SW tip of Lake Michigan where it misses out on most lake effect snow. Just 50 miles away on the other side of the lake over in Michigan city, they can get pounded by lake effect.