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.
