With NY digging out, more heavy snow is in the forecast
BUFFALO, N.Y. — A massive storm dumped several feet of snow in the areas ringing Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, causing at least three deaths and creating gridlock as tractor-trailers detoured onto smaller roads to avoid a closure of part of Interstate 90 in western New York.
The lake-effect storm had produced more than 6 feet of snow in some areas by Saturday morning.
The Buffalo metropolitan area was hit particularly hard, with some areas south of the city bearing the brunt.
The front had begun to move northward from Buffalo by Saturday, but forecasts called for more snow as Monday approached.
According to the National Weather Service, the suburb of Orchard Park reported 77 inches by early Saturday.
About 80 miles northeast of the city, the town of Natural Bridge, near the Fort Drum Army base, reported just under 6 feet.
The National Weather Service predicted partial sunshine and a break from the snow on Saturday in New York, but the respite is not expected to last for long.
“Later on this evening and through early next week, we’re expecting another round of lake-effect snow for much of western New York,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Zack Taylor, who is based in College Park, Maryland.
He said that could produce as much as 15 inches of snow for areas near Lake Erie and 2 feet for areas near Lake Ontario.
In the Buffalo area, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz tweeted that two people died “associated with cardiac events related to exertion during shoveling/snow blowing.” A third person — a snowplow driver in the town of Hamlet, Indiana — was killed Friday when his plow slid off the pavement and rolled over, the Starke County Sheriff ’s Department. Hamlet is in northwest Indiana, about 30 miles from Lake Michigan.
In other tweets, Poloncarz expressed frustration at reports of trucks getting stuck on smaller roads as they tried to get around the I-90 detour. A video posted online showed a line of trucks backed up on a street in Orchard Park.
The storm’s effects varied widely in the region due to the peculiarities of lake-effect storms, which are caused by frigid winds picking up moisture from warmer lakes and dumping snow in narrow bands. Some areas of Buffalo were battered by blowing, heavy snow off Lake Erie while just miles away, residents only had to contend with a few inches.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed about 70 members of the National Guard to help with snow removal in some of the hardest-hit areas.
Buffalo has experience with dramatic lake-effect snowstorms, few worse than the one that struck in November 2014.
That epic storm dumped 7 feet of snow on some communities over three days, collapsing roofs and trapping motorists in more than 100 vehicles on a lakeside stretch of the New York State Thruway.