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Roger Muehlig has a fascinating story this morning on a 40-year-old master planning document that would have aligned the land use planning for both the city and county.

When you drive around Batavia and contemplate the disorganized approach both entities took to commercial and retail development, you have to wonder: Why was the plan ignored?

The report, "A Comprehensive Master Plan for the Batavia Area," was done by Herbert H. Smith Associates of Rochester as consultant to a Batavia Area Planning Board. It is not dated, but was apparently done in the late 1960s.

Purpose of the area planning board, established in 1966, was "to provide foresight and guidance on matters of concern to both the city and town," according to the document that's on file at the Genesee County Planning Department,

The plan was commissioned in late 1967, the report said, and there are several references to a 20-year planning period up to 1990. The plan, it said, projects the area board's thinking approximately 20 years into the future, "and is therefore an effort to envision the Batavia of 1990."

Review of the 88-page plan is especially timely considering the current proposal to considate the town and city, but isn't there also an element of a little too late?  Batavia has undergone a lot of development and revedevelopment in 40 years. It might be a little hard to organize things now.

What would be more helpful, especially if consolidation goes through, is a completely new master plan -- one that builds on Batavia's historic strengths, finds solutions for catastrophic mistakes (like, the Mall), and focuses on creating a dynamic business environment to create jobs and grow revenue.

Quick thinking and the amazing athleticism of a 72-year-old resident of a Bank Street townhouse  may have saved the lives of him and his wife as he single-handily battled a fire, according to a Democrat & Chronicle story.

Something awoke the couple at about 3:40 a.,m. this morning, and the man -- who is not identified -- jumped from his second floor window, grabbed a shovel, smashed a window and extinguished the fire before firefighters arrived using water and a five-gallon bucket.

The couple was treated and released for smoke inhalation at United Memorial Medical Center. The man also sustain some cuts on his feet from broken glass.

The apartment, at 337 Bank Street, suffered enough damage to make it unlivable. It did not have a working smoke detector, according to Chief Tom Dillon.

From all of us at The Batavian, Happy New Year to you and your family.

The first eight months of The Batavian has been fun, interesting and challenging.  The site has grown quickly and we appreciate your support and participation in the site.

We're looking forward to the promise of 2009 and hope that your New Year will lead to many happy returns.

Some of you have already noticed the site color has changed. 

Those of you familiar with the first three months or so of The Batavian's existence will recognize this site design. It's what we started with.  It was a default theme for the content management system we use and never intended to be a long-term site design.  For various reasons, however, we haven't yet been able to invest in a formal redesign of the site.  As a stop-gap, I went out and found that black-based theme and liked it at first.

But we all grew tired of it pretty quickly.  We always got a few complaints about it being hard to read, especially the links in the right and left columns.  But because the site had grown so much, we couldn't just switch back without some effort.  We're making that switch now.  There's still some kinks to work out, but we're not going back to black.

Eventually, we'll come up with some snazzy redesign and stick with that for a while.

There's also been a couple of other site upgrades that you may have noticed over the past couple of weeks.

First, if you go to the People page now, you'll notice that for any member of the site who isn't your "Friend" yet, you will see a link that says "Add as a Friend."  This will help you better identify people whom you know and should be on your friends list, or people you would like to know.

When people are on your friends list, it makes it easier, through the "Friend Feed" on the left side of the page or your own profile page, to follow their contributions to the site.

Second big upgrade is a new photo sharing tool.  Now you can have, essentially, your own photo blog on the site.  You can upload as many photos as you like. 

To add a photo, click "Create Content" and then "Share Photos." The process for adding a photo should be pretty self-explanatory, but let us know if you have problems.

Unlike adding a photo to a blog post, which requires you to manually resize the photos, you can now upload photos just as they come out of your camera (if you like) and our software will automatically resize the photos for you.  You can also use this feature to upload photos that you plan to use in a blog post. There is now a button on the blog entry form to allow you to easily navigate to your own photos, find the photo you want to use and add it to your post.

As always, we will continue to work on expanding and improving The Batavian.

UPDATE: I forget to mention: If the new template seems faster: It is.  The code is a little cleaner than the old template, plus we made some other performance enhancements to the software and the server. 

If you haven't guessed by now, our small staff is pretty much in holiday mode.  Expect posting to be light through the weekend.

Of course, we'll continue to monitor the site and if you hear of any news -- do a blog post yourself, or leave a comment, and we'll pick up on it.

It looks like the crew at WBTA is also taking a well deserved break for Christmas.  There are some fresh stories on the Daily's site, if you're looking for some news, and I suspect they will continue to post on their regular editorial schedule.

Merry Christmas. 

The following announcement has been posted on thedailynewsonline.com:

DUE TO STORM: Some subscribers may receive Monday's paper with Tuesday's edition

If your job requires a commute to either Rochester or Buffalo, you might want to call your boss now and tell him or her you won't make it into work today.  That big project you're working on? It will just have to wait.

The Thruway is closed in both directions from from Rochester to Erie, Pa., according to the Thruway Authority web site.  Those are exits 46 to 61.

We have no information on alternative routes at this time, but if the Thruway is closed ... 

UPDATE: 6:24 a.m.: WBTA has more on closings and cancellations.

UPDATE: 6:49 a.m.: Here's the latest weather statement from the National Weather Service:

... SLOW TRAVEL ACROSS THE NIAGARA FRONTIER THIS MORNING...

WHILE THE HEAVY LAKE SNOWS HAVE PUSHED SOUTH... THERE WILL STILL BE AREAS OF REDUCED VISIBILITIES FROM BLOWING SNOW EARLY THIS MORNING. THIS WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY SOME OCCASIONAL LIGHT SNOW SHOWERS... ESPECIALLY ACROSS ORLEANS AND GENESEE COUNTIES WHERE MORE WIDESPREAD LAKE ONTARIO GENERATED SNOWS WILL BE FOUND.

TEMPERATURES EARLY THIS MORNING WILL BE CLOSE TO 10 DEGREES...

WITH GUSTY WEST WINDS OF 15 TO 30 MPH PRODUCING WIND CHILL VALUES CLOSE TO 10 BELOW ZERO. MOTORISTS SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR SNOW COVERED ROADS AND A LONGER COMMUTE TIME.

ANYONE HEADING OUTDOORS SHOULD ALSO BE DRESSED FOR THE SUB ZERO WIND CHILLS BY COVERING AS MUCH EXPOSED SKIN AS POSSIBLE. DRESSING IN LAYERS IS ALSO SUGGESTED.

Lake Effect Snow is coming.

The predicted storm is significant enough for the National Weather Service to issue the ominous warning that travel between 1 p.m. Sunday and 7 a.m. Monday may be impossible.

Meanwhile, the late Saturday, Sunday morning weather "watch" has been downgraded to an advisory.  That's small comfort compared to the dire language of the NWS warning:

SNOW WILL DEVELOP FROM WEST TO EAST ACROSS THE REGION LATE TONIGHT... WITH THE STEADIEST SNOWFALL EXPECTED SUNDAY MORNING INTO THE EARLY AFTERNOON. THE SNOW SUNDAY AFTERNOON WILL BECOME LAKE ENHANCED AND BE ACCOMPANIED BY STRONG SOUTHWEST WINDS... WHICH COULD GUST WELL OVER 40 MPH. THIS WILL PRODUCE SIGNIFICANT BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW WITH FREQUENT WHITEOUTS. THERE COULD EVEN BE SOME MINOR WIND DAMAGE.

and

A DOUBLE BARRELED LOW STRETCHING FROM THE UPPER GREAT LAKES TO THE OHIO VALLEY SATURDAY EVENING WILL GRADUALLY WORK ACROSS OUR REGION BEGINNING AFTER 3 OR 4 AM IN THE WEST AND ABOUT DAYBREAK FOR THE EASTERN LAKE ONTARIO COUNTIES. THIS WILL RESULT IN ANOTHER ROUND OF ACCUMULATING SNOW FOR THE ENTIRE REGION WITH THE HEAVIEST AMOUNTS ACROSS THE EASTERN LAKE ONTARIO COUNTIES.

BY FAR THOUGH... THE BIGGEST IMPACT FROM THIS SYSTEM WILL BE STRONG WINDS ON THE BACK SIDE OF THIS LOW. ANY SNOW THAT DOES FALL WILL BE BLOWN AROUND WITH SIGNIFICANT DRIFTING... CAUSING FREQUENT WHITEOUTS. THE WORST AREAS WILL BE EAST OF THE LAKES WHERE LOCALIZED BLIZZARD CONDITIONS CAN BE EXPECTED.

My hope: Things clear up enough by Monday afternoon for my wife's flight from California to safely arrive at ROC.

Be safe, stay warm and pray for the safety of those people who have no choice but to brave the elements on our behalf.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm watch for Sunday.

"Watch" is a little more manageable than the "warning" level issued prior to the storm that hit Genesee County yesterday.  That storm dumped as much as 12 inches of snow on parts of the region.

But that doesn't mean there won't be significant accumulations of snow through Sunday night (starting tonight).

SNOW WILL DEVELOP FROM WEST TO EAST ACROSS THE REGION LATE SATURDAY NIGHT... WITH THE STEADIEST SNOWFALL EXPECTED SUNDAY MORNING INTO THE EARLY AFTERNOON. THE SNOW SUNDAY AFTERNOON WILL THEN BE ACCOMPANIED BY STRONG SOUTHWEST WINDS... WHICH COULD GUST TO BETWEEN 30 AND 40 MPH. THIS WILL PRODUCE AREAS OF BLOWING SNOW WITH GREATLY REDUCED VISIBILITIES AND THERE COULD EVEN BE THE CHANCE FOR HIGHER GUSTS WHICH COULD PRODUCE MINOR WIND DAMAGE.

WHILE THERE WILL BE THE POTENTIAL FOR SNOWFALL IN EXCESS OF 6 INCHES ON SUNDAY... LAKE SNOWS SUNDAY NIGHT COULD PRODUCE MUCH MORE SIGNIFICANT ACCUMULATIONS.

Here's what the Thruway looks like at the moment:

The Daily just put up 11 photos from yesterday's storm coverage.  The photo gallery set up is a little awkward to navigate, but there's some good shots.

Roger Muehlig writes this morning about Bella, a two-year-old Staffordshire-bull mastiff mix, belonging to Tim and Julie LaPorte of Stafford, who gave birth last week to 15 puppies.

A normal litter is is about eight puppies.

Mother and pups are doing just fine.

Mom doesn't play favorites.

"She's wonderful (at feeding). She rotates them. She stays with them all day," Julie said.

It sounds like Bella is a designer dog.

We're really proud of the coverage that Philip Anselmo and Brian Hillabush provided today. If you liked the coverage, please e-mail all of your friends -- be sure they know that a visit to The Batavian is worthwhile because we're going to provide complete and timely coverage of the important and interesting news of Genesee County.

The Daily News has posted the following notice on its web site:

DUE TO STORM: Your Friday paper may be delivered with Saturday's edition.

Also, here's the Daily's latest storm story by Scott DeSmit and Joanne Beck. Key bit of information, GCC was shut down today.

We've had so many posts so far today that some of our earlier posts have flowed off the home page.

And we've got more posts coming from Brian Hillabush and Philip Anselmo.

If you're just hitting the site for the first time today, or might otherwise have missed some coverage, please scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "next" link on the pager to see any coverage you might have missed.

Also, we continue to welcome any weather pictures or stories you might want to post.

WBTA has posted an MP3 audio interview with Tom Nizoil, chief meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Buffalo.  He says snow is falling at a rate of one- to-two inches per hour and that traffic conditions will remain treacherous throughout the day.

Here's the view from the web cam at the I-90/Batavia Interchange.

As the satellite image above shows, a large storm system is moving into Western New York. You can follow the progress of the storm on Weather.com,

WBTA reports that all schools in Genesee County have already announced they are closed today in anticipation of heavy snow and gusting winds.

The National Weather Service reissued its winter storm warning at 3 a.m., with an upgraded prediction of up to 10 inches of snow. Snow could fall from one to two inches an hour during the morning hours, and the heaviest snow fall could be accompanied by thunder. The warning is in effect from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.  While the morning and afternoon storm might dump as much as 10 inches of snow on the region, the evening snow showers could add another three inches.

We encourage you to be safe today.  You can post your own storm updates and information on The Batavian.  Of course, we'll be covering conditions throughout the day. You can also turn into WBTA for storm news updates. We imagine the Daily News will also offer updates.

UPDATE 8:20 a.m.:  The current radar map shows snow falling on the entire region, but we haven't heard yet of a single flak falling.  Have you seen any snow yet?

UPDATE: 8:39 a.m.: Below are web cam images from the I-90 Pembroke Interchange and the I-90 LeRoy Interchange. It looks like the first one shows snow and the second one does. Well, I managed to surprise myself -- thought I was grabing still images from the web cam, but actually the images are refreshing right on our page. As I look now, at 8:46 a.m., big flakes can be seen on the LeRoy cam.

But look at this image from Alden