CAN’T DIG IT IN BUFFALO
Snow crews shovel all day and get nowhere, but Bills & Steelers go today
BUFFALO — Logan Eschrich came to Buffalo to witness the snowstorm, and he stayed for the shoveling on Sunday.
Once the professional storm chaser saw the Bills invite fans to help dig out a snow-filled Highmark Stadium for their delayed playoff game against the Steelers, now scheduled for today, Eschrich couldn’t resist.
Sniffling and shivering from the cold, Eschrich detailed the seemingly impossible task he and the estimated 85-person shovel crew faced while being compensated $20 an hour. Winds whipped at 30 mph, and snow was falling at a rate of two inches per hour at what was supposed to be the game’s 1 p.m. EST kickoff, which has been pushed back to 4:30 p.m. today “It would have been absolutely impossible (to play). We could barely see the next row down from us. And unfortunately, it’s still that way,” Eschrich told The Associated Press by phone in the mid-afternoon. “We made progress shoveling, but not much at all.”
He said bleacher seats were entirely buried by snow, adding that it was treacherous to travel the mere two blocks to the stadium from where he camped overnight.
“I’m very happy they put the travel ban into effect,” said Eschrich, who works for Live Storms Media, and made the 16-hour trip from Alabama, where he had planned to get video of tornadoes. “Nobody should be out here.”
The Buffalo region, which includes the Bills’ home in Orchard Park, was mostly at a standstill, with a travel ban in place due to a dangerous lake-effect storm that began on Saturday and was expected to last through Sunday night.
The storm was projected to dump up between 1 and 3 feet of snow, with the heaviest accumulation around Orchard
Park.
With the storm’s brunt expected to wane by Sunday night, the National Weather Service’s forecast for today called for a chance of snow showers in the morning and a high of 19 degrees Fahrenheit, but with strong wind making it feel like minus-5.
On Sunday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she expected the game to kick off as scheduled, with the end of the storm allowing time for roads and the stadium to be cleared of snow. A day earlier, Hochul and the NFL cited public safety concerns as the reason to push the game back.
Bills players and staff spent Sunday at home. The Steelers arrived
Sunday afternoon with travel restrictions having been lifted at Buffalo Niagara International Airport and northern parts of Erie County.
Former Bills center Eric Wood recalled his first time experiencing a lake-effect storm in Buffalo in November 2014, which has since been dubbed “Snowvember.” The storm dumped nearly seven feet of snow on Orchard Park over a fourday stretch and led to Buffalo’s home game against the Jets being moved to Detroit.
Wood was among seven Bills players in his neighborhood who had to be picked up by snowmobile and transported to the team’s facility before being bused to the airport.
“The whiteout conditions are like nothing I had ever experienced,” said Wood, who’s from Cincinnati. “Until you experience this snow and understand its effect, it’s hard to appreciate what can truly happen in such a short amount of time, and often without notice.”