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Radar Image of Giant Buffalo Snowstorm Looks Like Buffalo Bills Logo

Even the NFL team sees the resemblance.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, and generational studies Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper
2 min read
better-bills-logo.png

Can you see the Buffalo Bills team logo in this image of the snowstorm now hitting the Buffalo area?

 Twitter

Glimpses of oncoming storms often take on familiar shapes. Some people thought both 2017's Hurricane Irma and 2018's Hurricane Matthew appeared to have devilish skull faces. Now, as a huge snowstorm dumps snow on Buffalo, New York, some are spotting the NFL Buffalo Bills football team's logo in weather radar of the storm.

It all started on Wednesday, when Colin McCarthy, dubbed an "extreme weather enthusiast" by The Buffalo News, tweeted an image of the then-upcoming storm's path. The image was heavy on the red and blue -- Buffalo Bills colors -- and fans instantly started to see the team's innocuous logo in the terrifying radar picture.

"Does anyone else see the Bills logo??" tweeted Bills fan Kalli Mariakis.

Even the Bills' own official Twitter account is buying in to the comparison, tweeting the images along with the words, "(be right back) going outside to shovel." However, the version the Bills tweeted was rather obviously edited to more closely follow the logo. Nice try, guys.

There's a word for seeing familiar objects in random shapes -- pareidolia. It happens a lot with space objects.

The Buffalo Bills introduced their logo, a blue charging buffalo with a red streak, back in 1974. The team played its first season in 1960. Earlier logos always incorporated a buffalo, but not in such an active stance.

The storm forced the Bills to relocate Sunday's upcoming game against the Cleveland Browns from Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, New York, the Bills' home stadium, to Detroit's Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions. The Lions weren't scheduled to play at home Sunday, and instead will take on the N.Y. Giants at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. 

More than 5 feet (1.5 meters) of snow had been recorded in Orchard Park by Friday night, The New York Times reported, with snow falling at a rate of 2 to 3 inches (about 5 to 7.5 centimeters) per hour.