BUFFALO — Upstate New York’s traditional snow belts lived up to their reputation Monday, with some areas receiving as much as two feet of lake-effect snow.

The pounding began late Sunday and continued through Monday, piling 23 inches by midmorning on the ski village of Ellicottville, south of Buffalo, and 19 inches on Port Leyden on the western edge of the Adirondacks. In central New York’s frosty Tug Hill region, 24 inches fell in Constableville.

“Yesterday morning we had none. So it’s quite a transition to go from no snow to all this. When you open the door, it’s amazing,” said Dorothy Valenti, the librarian in Constableville.

Most metropolitan areas, including Buffalo, Syracuse and Albany were spared any measurable early season accumulation from the lake-effect storms that formed as cold air swept over Lakes Erie and Ontario.

The exceptions were Rochester, which was in line to receive 3 to 6 inches off Lake Ontario by Monday evening, and Olean and Jamestown in the Southern Tier.

Jamestown had picked up more than a foot by midday, while Olean was bracing for up to 7 inches.

Parts of Oswego, Lewis and Oneida counties near Lake Ontario spent Monday under National Weather Service lake-effect snow warnings, along with Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties in the Southern Tier.

Drivers along the New York State Thruway in southern Herkimer and northern Fulton counties were warned about fast falling snow and poor visibility.

“It’s not nice,” Cattaraugus County emergency dispatcher Laurie Moore said Monday morning. “Lots of snow. Roads are snow-covered and slippery.”

The remote Tug Hill region north of Syracuse gets about 25 feet or more of snow each winter, so although lake effect squalls are commonplace, they usually don’t come so early in the season, Valenti said at the library.

“I know people are having a hard time shoveling. It’s a wet, heavy snow,” she said.