Western New York braces for first major snow storm

BUFFALO: An early winter storm swept into western New York state, prompting school closures and threatening to dump up to 1.2m of snow on Buffalo and other areas downwind of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario by late this weekend.

Erie County, which encompasses Buffalo, declared a state of emergency on Thursday and imposed a driving ban starting at 9pm EST for all but emergency travel.

The Buffalo Public Schools district, the state’s second-largest, announced it was cancelling all classes and closing its offices on Friday, idling more than 32,000 students.

The region’s first major snowstorm of the season also prompted the National Football League to move tomorrow’s scheduled game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cleveland Browns to Detroit.

Snowfall rates of 8cm an hour were forecast in some locations to the south and east of the two Great Lakes starting late on Thursday, said Liz Jurkowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) in Buffalo.

The squalls could persist through Sunday, creating sporadic bursts of intense snowfall along narrow bands. The heaviest totals were likely in Buffalo, the weather service said on its website, stressing it was difficult to predict exactly where the snow bands would develop.

“What we are talking about is a major, major storm,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said on Thursday, a day after she declared a state of emergency in the Buffalo area.