Driving a rental car through upstate New York (Buffalo to Syracuse)
Next spring (second week of May), I'm looking to explore upstate New York before my sister's graduation from Syracuse - I live in California, and have never been to New York outside the city, so I've been exploring various travel options. Everything I've seen has made Buffalo much more attractive of an option, price-wise, to the point that I think it might well be worth the extra ~hour out of the way (from what I can tell from Google Maps) compared to the Rochester airport, or the Syracuse airport (obviously much more convenient; also crazy expensive from the west coast, plus I'd rather get the excuse to explore more anyway.)
I can handle the extra drive time, but as I've never been to that area, I figured I would ask to make sure, weather-wise, whether that plan would be foolish. My mom, who has visited my sister there before, says when she was there in mid-April, there was still snow everywhere. So I suppose my two questions would be:
If I were thinking of driving from Buffalo to Letchworth National Park, then to Syracuse by way of passing through Watkins Glen, then back to Buffalo (obviously not in a day - I'd have over a week for this trip), how likely is it that I would encounter weather hazards (i.e. snow) in early May?
If the answer to #1 isn't "highly unlikely", and I were in a budget rental car, how well maintained would those roads be / how well equipped would a budget rental be to handle said hazards?
Best Answer
Early spring weather in May should be beautiful, perfect for visiting the area.
BTW, Letchworth is a NY State Park, not national. Excellent though, as is Watkins Glen, also a NY State Park.
Additional suggestions -
If you are in Buffalo, Niagara Falls is just a little over half an hour away and is very much worth a visit. It has many fabulous viewpoints on both the American and Canadian sides and the border crossing into Canada usually goes pretty smoothly and quickly. Goat Island is excellent. Aside from parking, the best stuff is free.
Also worth a stop is Chimney Bluffs State Park in Wolcott, between Rochester and Syracuse.
Buttermilk Falls State Park in Ithaca and Taughannock Falls State Park north of Ithaca are also worth visiting.
As people have said, don't worry about the weather. Not that you will have snow in May, but just for the record, my sister and brother in law lived near Rochester for years and the kids never missed a day of school due to snow.
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Answer 2
- Yes, it's Upstate, but you can't expect to snow in early May. Don't worry about weather conditions while driving around.
- Roads are usually ok in that area, if you stick on 400 and 20A roads to Letchworth and then 390 and 90 roads to Syracuse.
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