It's honestly not that bad, assuming the power doesn't go out. Or that it's not followed up by freezing rain.

No one goes to work or school for a couple of days. People usually stock up on essentials in the days before the storm. (Milk, bread, butter, eggs... the old joke is that everyone has a sudden urge to eat French Toast.)

Plows usually start early, while the snow is still falling. Plow and salt crews work night and day. They're on call (and paid a stipend) during winter for this exact reason. The main streets are prioritized. Residential streets are going to wait a couple of days before they're clear. With nothing else to do, the adults start digging themselves out and helping their neighbors dig out. It's a hell of a workout and a good reason to check on elderly neighbors.

Basically, you wake up, say "fuck this shit," call in (or not, because your boss isn't at work), and go back to sleep for another few hours. Then you start digging.

A city that doesn't get that much snow can get overwhelmed, though. Mayor Mel famously called in the military to clear snow from Toronto back in 1998-ish. That was only a meter, but the city didn't have the resources to clear it - or more importantly - any free space to put it.

Buffalo though? Buffalo has their snow systems down.

When a large quantity of snow falls it gets cleared with huge plow trucks and heavy machinery, sometimes huge plows attached to the heavy machinery. Think enormous front loaders and stuff. Some places will load it into dump trucks and dump it into a body of water.

I live in VT and the most I’ve seen at once was 40” or so. But here it’s usually elevation dependent and the cities are in low valleys where they’ll get a few inches and the mountains 30 minutes up the road will get two feet.