Millions of people hunkered down in a deep freeze overnight and early morning to ride out the frigid storm that has killed at least 18 people across the United States, trapping some residents inside homes with heaping snow drifts and knocking out power to several hundred thousand homes and businesses.
Officials in Erie County, N.Y., on Sunday reported four additional deaths attributed to the catastrophic snowstorm that has wreaked havoc across much of the country, bringing to seven the number of known fatalities in the hard-hit Buffalo area.
The people who died were found in homes and on the street, said Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz, warning that additional fatalities could be discovered later. The names of the dead were not released.
Heavy snow, wind and whiteout conditions paralyzed Buffalo, despite the city’s extensive winter equipment and experience with heavy snowfalls, and officials said the disaster may go down as the worst in the region’s history. More than 27,000 households in Erie County remained without power early Sunday, officials said.
The scope of the storm has been nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico. About 60% of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.
Some 1,346 domestic and international flights were canceled as of early Sunday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.
Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.
As the snow shifted south and winds subsided Sunday, crews were contending with power substations that are frozen and need specialized equipment for repairs, officials said in a briefing. Some first responders required rescue during the storm, and two warming centers closed after losing power. The operations center that handles 911 calls nearly had to be shut down after its fire-suppression system ruptured, causing flooding.
Story continues below advertisement Poloncarz said crews reached the home where it had been reported that a 1-year-old baby was being kept alive on a ventilator but found no one there and had not been able to contact members of the family.
The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, with hurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions, paralyzing emergency response efforts — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was stranded — and shutting down the airport through Monday, according to officials. The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 43 inches (109 centimeters) at 7 a.m. Sunday.
Freezing conditions and day-old power outages had Buffalonians scrambling Saturday to get out of their homes to anywhere that had heat. But with city 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.”
Mark Poloncarz, executive of Erie County, home to Buffalo, said ambulances were taking more than three hours to make a single hospital trip and the blizzard may be “the worst storm in our community’s history.”
Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, he said, and another died in Buffalo.
“We can’t just pick up everybody and take you to a warming center. We don’t have the capability of doing that,” Poloncarz said. “Many, many neighborhoods, especially in the city of Buffalo, are still impassable.”
Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was on his way to visit relatives in Hamilton, Ontario, for Christmas with his daughters Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo. Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running in the vehicle buffeted by wind and nearly buried in snow.
“It was bad, is the best way to put it. It was as bad as anyone’s ever seen,” Poloncarz said, adding that he has been in touch with the Biden administration as well as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) about obtaining additional resources. “This is a snowstorm that will never be forgotten, due to the ferocity of it.”
Briefing reporters later Sunday morning, Hochul said National Guard members were on the ground in the hardest-hit areas of Erie County, with more on the way, helping doctors and nurses get to hospitals and rescuing people stuck in vehicles.
Story continues below advertisement “This is a war with Mother Nature, and she has been hitting us with everything she has,” said the governor, who served as Erie County Clerk from 2007 to 2011. “This is one for the ages, and we’re still in the middle of it.”
Why this blizzard could be the worst in Buffalo's history
The blast of Arctic air continued to chill much of the eastern United States, according to the National Weather Service, but is expected to weaken as it drifts eastward.
More than 175,000 utility customers across the country remained without power as of Sunday morning, according to poweroutage.us., down from at least 1.5 million on Friday. The storm has snarled traffic and travel plans over the Christmas holiday, with more than 1,400 flights canceled in the United States as of Sunday morning, according to Flight Aware, compared with more than 3,488 canceled on Saturday.
By 4 a.m. Saturday, with their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby shelter. He carried 6-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, stepping into his footprints as they trudged through drifts.
“If I stay in this car I’m going to die here with my kids,” he recalled thinking, but believing they had to try. He cried when the family walked through the shelter doors. “It’s something I will never forget in my life."
The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle, and a major electricity grid operator warned 65 million people across the eastern U.S. of possible rolling blackouts.
But heat and lights were steadily being restored across the U.S. According to poweroutage.us, less than 300,000 customers were without power at 8 a.m. EDT Sunday - down from a peak of 1.7 million. In North Carolina, less than 6,600 customers had no power - down from a peak of 485,000 or more. Utility officials said rolling blackouts would continue for the next few days.
Across the six New England states, about 121,300 customers remained without power Sunday, with Maine still the hardest hit. Some utilities said electricity may not be restored for days.
Storm-related deaths were reported in recent days all over the country: four dead in an Ohio Turnpike pileup involving some 50 vehicles; four motorists killed in separate crashes in Missouri and Kansas; an Ohio utility worker electrocuted; a Vermont woman struck by a falling branch; an apparently homeless man found amid Colorado's subzero temperatures; a woman who fell through Wisconsin river ice.
In Mexico, migrants camped near the U.S. border were facing unusually cold temperatures as they awaited a U.S. Supreme Court decision on pandemic-era restrictions preventing many from seeking asylum.
Along Interstate 71 in Kentucky, Terry Henderson and her husband, Rick, weathered a 34-hour traffic jam in a rig outfitted with a diesel heater, a toilet and a refrigerator after getting stuck trying to drive from Alabama to their Ohio home for Christmas.
“We should have stayed,” Terry Henderson said after they got moving again Saturday.
Poloncarz of Erie County tweeted late Saturday that 34.6 inches (about 88 centimeters) of snow had accumulated at the Buffalo Airport and drifts were well over 6 feet (1.8 meters) in some areas. Blizzard conditions were expected to ease early Sunday, he added, but continuing lake effect snow was forecast.
Vivian Robinson of Spirit of Truth Urban Ministry in Buffalo said she and her husband have been sheltering and cooking for 60 to 70 people, including stranded travelers and locals without power or heat, who were spending Saturday night at the church.
Many arrived with ice and snow plastered to their clothes, crying, their skin reddened by the single-digit temperatures. On Saturday night, they prepared to spend Christmas together.
“It’s emotional just to see the hurt... that they thought they were not going to make it, and to see that we had opened up the church, and it gave them a sense of relief,” Robinson said. “Those who are here are really enjoying themselves. It’s going to be a different Christmas for everyone.”
Story continues below advertisement “This is not the type of system you see every day in terms of intensity,” Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said of the Artic blast that over the last few days stretched from Washington state to Florida. The storm pummeled the Great Lakes region with the heaviest snow, he said, and could still drop additional inches on the Buffalo area even as the cold air drifts to the northeast.
In Erie County, a ban on driving remained in place, and officials called on residents to keep their water running so that pipes would not freeze. Officials said the region, which received several feet of snow in a 48-hour period, is used to shoveling out when that occurs.
But during this blizzard, in addition to frigid temperatures, wind gusts that reached to nearly 80 mph created dangerous drifts and whiteout conditions that blinded drivers. Cook, the meteorologist, said the gusts whipped up the snow for roughly 40 hours.
“It’s like putting in front of you a sheet of white paper and just keeping it,” Poloncarz said.
He pleaded with county employees who have been home for the past two days to report to work and relieve their exhausted colleagues.
“This was not the Christmas that we wanted,” he said. “It will be a Christmas that we remember.”
