Piles of snow bury parts of New York state

Piles of snow, in some places taller than most people, buried parts of western and northern New York as a lake-effect storm pounded areas east of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario for a third straight day yesterday, with possibly even more to come.

Snowfall totals as high as 196cm were reported in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, home to the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. Partway across the state, the town of Natural Bridge, near the Fort Drum Army base, reported just under 1.8m.

The snowfall in some spots ranked among the highest ever recorded in the area, rivalling the eye-popping amounts that fell during similar storms in 2014 and 1945.

The snowfall totals, which began accumulating on Thursday night, local time, in some spots, ‘‘would be on the order of historic not only for any time of year but for any part of the country,’’ said National Weather Service meteorologist Frank Pereira, at NWS headquarters in College Park, Maryland.

The lake-effect storm, caused by cold air picking up moisture from warmer lakes, created narrow bands of windblown snow that dumped metres of snow in some communities, while leaving towns a short drive away relatively unscathed. It wreaked havoc on some roadways, as trucks that took to smaller backroads to avoid a closure on parts of an interstate in the area ended up in mass gridlock that Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz described on social media as ‘‘tractor-trailer demo derby day’’.

The snowfall forced the National Football League to move Sunday’s game between the Bills and Cleveland Browns to Detroit.

Partial sunshine and a break from the snow came in some of the hardesthit areas south of Buffalo’s centre yesterday as the snow bands shifted north.

Governor Kathy Hochul deployed about 70 members of the National Guard to help with snow removal in some of the hardest-hit areas.

Poloncarz tweeted that two people in the Buffalo area died ‘‘associated with cardiac events related to exertion during shovelling/snow blowing.’’

The lake-effect has also dumped up to 0.6 metres of snow in some communities in Michigan south of Lake Superior and east of Lake Michigan.

AP Martin Haslinger uses a snowblower outside his home in Buffalo, New York, following a lakeeffect snowstorm. Residents of the northern New York state are digging out from the dangerous snowstorm that had dropped nearly 2m of snow in some areas and caused three deaths.