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Daylight Sunday revealed cars nearly covered by snowdrifts and thousands of houses, some adorned in unlit holiday displays, dark from a lack of power.
Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes on Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, and another died in Buffalo. Four more deaths were confirmed overnight, bringing the total to seven in Erie County, where County Executive Mark Poloncarz warned there may be more dead.
“Some were found in cars, some were found on the street in snowbanks,” said Poloncarz. “We know there are people who have been stuck in cars for more than two days.”
A flooded street in East Boston, Massachussetts, on Friday. Credit:AP
Freezing conditions and day-old power outages had Buffalonians scrambling to get out of their homes to anywhere that had heat amid what Hochul called the longest sustained blizzard conditions ever in the city. But with streets under a thick blanket of white, that wasn’t an option for people like Jeremy Manahan, who charged his phone in his parked car after almost 29 hours without electricity.
“There’s one warming shelter, but that would be too far for me to get to. I can’t drive, obviously, because I’m stuck,” Manahan said. “And you can’t be outside for more than 10 minutes without getting frostbit.”
Francisco Erazo uses his snow blower to clear snow in Michigan.Credit:
In New York, more than 39,000 households were still without power on Sunday , including 27,000 in Erie County, as crews battled high winds and found substations damaged. Hochul said that even the National Guard, which now has 200 people on the ground and another 200 expected by Monday, struggled with getting stuck in the snow.
Residents of Buffalo, northern New York state, have been hit with a dangerous lake-effect snowstorm that had dropped nearly 1.8m of snow in some areas and caused three deaths.Credit:The Buffalo News/AP
Three more weather-related fatalities were confirmed in Kentucky - two from car accidents and one a homeless person who died of exposure.
Freezing rain and ice from a separate storm in the Pacific Northwest made travel treacherous there as well.
Garrett Fuller helps friend Robin Jacobs get up after slipping to the icy ground on Capitol Hill, Seattle.Credit:AP
Border to border
From the Canadian to the Mexican border and coast to coast, some 240 million people in all were under winter weather warnings and advisories of some sort on Friday, according to the weather service.
The NWS said its map of existing or impending meteorological hazards “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever”.
The American Automobile Association had estimated that 112.7 million people planned to venture 80 kilometres or more from home between Friday and January 2. But stormy weather heading into the weekend likely ended up keeping many of them at home.
AP and Reuters
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