Snow Patrol

About Snow Patrol

Lake Manitou sits right at Rochester's edge, and every winter it goes from open water full of diving ducks to a sheet of ice thick enough for shanties and four-wheelers before most people in Fulton County have put their gardens to bed. Snow Patrol works the roads that ring that lake and the county grid beyond it, where round barns—more of them here than almost anywhere in the state—stand out white-roofed against white fields by the second real snowfall. The crew is out ahead of the school run, blading driveways along the lake road and clearing the lots downtown near the courthouse before the coffee shop opens. Wind off Manitou can load a driveway with drift twice as deep as what fell from the sky, and that's the kind of job the trucks are built for. By the time the ice augers come out on the lake, the roads back to it are already clean.