Treacherous winter weather kills 34 across US, paralyzes Buffalo
Millions of Americans woke up in the dark to a dangerously windy and white Christmas on Sunday following a brutal winter storm that affected more than half the country and killed at least 34 people nationwide, with the death toll only expected to rise.
Rescue and recovery workers rushed to people stranded in their homes and cars by snow drifts, while tens of thousands of households were left without heat in bitter cold temperatures.
Some 60% of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning this weekend and a large swath of the country — from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians — was grappling with temperatures that were far below normal, the National Weather Service said.
The storm knocked out power to 1.7 million customers from Maine to Seattle at the peak, though that number was down to less than 200,000 by Sunday afternoon, according to Poweroutage.us.
In Buffalo, much of the city remained “impassable” after ferocious extended blizzard conditions dumped 43 inches of snow at the airport and paralyzed the area. A driving ban remained in effect, and volunteer snowmobilers had been tapped to rescue stranded motorists, officials said.
First responders were “demoralized” by being unable to navigate the zero visibility conditions and freezing temperatures that had killed six people in the city, Mayor Byron Brown said during a Christmas morning update on Zoom.
“We know that number is going to be higher,” Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said of the stated death toll.
Six other people were dead from the storm in other parts of Erie County, officials said. The ages of fatal victims in Erie ranged from 26 to 93.
And one 27-year-old Niagara County man was killed after he was overcome with carbon monoxide as the result of snow blocking his furnace.
Wind gusts had slowed to 40 miles per hour from 79 mph Sunday, but 4 to 5 feet of snow were predicted in the city through Sunday night, and more than 27,000 homes were without power in Erie County on Christmas afternoon, according to Poweroutage.us.
Emergency responders had been stifled by the fast-falling snow, and ten fire trucks in the city had been stranded, according to local officials. Snow drifts in the city were as high as six feet.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said ambulances were taking three hours per trip, and that the extreme weather event might be “the worst storm in our community’s history.”
“Many, many neighborhoods, especially in the city of Buffalo, are still impassable,” he warned.
“It’s like a Category 3 hurricane with a bunch of snow mixed in,” Chief Tim Carney of the Erie County Sheriff’s Office told The Buffalo News of the brutal conditions.
Although parts of the region had seen more than 80 inches of snow just last month, the latest storm was considered historic because of its unrelenting ferocity and proximity to Christmas.
“This is the first time there have been blizzard conditions leading right up into Christmas Day,” Christopher Tate, associate weather producer and meteorologist at Fox Weather, told The Post. “It was also coupled with such intense snow and very very cold temperatures.”
“Even in a blizzard, it’s rare to get absolutely zero visibility. Usually it’s even a sixteenth of a mile… and we had that for an extended period with this system,” he said.
The bomb cyclone weather event — which occurs when atmospheric pressure plummets and cold air collides with warmer moist air to explosive effect — was heightened by temperatures in the single digits and teens colliding with relatively warm air of Lake Erie, where temps were in the mid 40s.
“This is probably just going to be called in the local vernacular, this was ‘The Christmas Blizzard,’” Tate predicted.
Jeremy Manahan braved the snow and cold to charge his phone in his car after spending nearly 30 hours without electricity in The Queen City.
“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.”
Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was taking his family to Canada for the holidays when their vehicle got stuck in Buffalo Friday. They spent hours in the vehicle trying to stay warm, until it was nearly buried in snow.
By Saturday morning, the SUV was almost out of gas, and Ilunga carried his 6-year-old daughter Destiny to a nearby shelter while Cindy, 16, and their Pomeranian puppy followed in his footsteps.
“If I stay in this car I’m going to die here with my kids,” he recalled thinking. When the desperate gambit paid off, and the family arrived at the shelter, Ilunga cried.
“It’s something I will never forget in my life,” he said.
The prolonged effects of Winter Storm Elliot were felt from coast to coast, with power down in communities from Maine to Washington state.
The cold weather was felt all the way from Canada to Mexico, and migrants waiting on a Supreme Court decision on a pandemic-era ruling that had expelled them from entering the country were camping out near the border in sub-freezing temperatures.
In Ohio, ten people died in multiple crashes, including in an Ohio Turnpike pileup involving more than four dozen vehicles, and a state utility worker was electrocuted.
Six others died in car crashes in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky.
The cold weather killed an apparently homeless man in Colorado, and a woman died in Wisconsin after falling through river ice. A Vermont woman was killed when she was hit by a falling tree branch.
Blizzard and travel warnings were in effect in Montana and parts of Idaho through Christmas Day.
“Travel could be very difficult to impossible,” advised the National Weather Service. “Widespread blowing snow will significantly reduce visibility, while drifting snow could lead to complete lane blockages.”
At least 1,707 domestic and international flights were canceled on Sunday by early afternoon, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
In Jackson, Mississippi, officials on Sunday advised that residents should boil their drinking water because of water lines bursting in the frigid temperatures.
In Florida, cold blooded iguanas were likely to fall out of trees after becoming immobilized by temperatures that reached as low as below freezing in Tampa — for the first time in almost five years — and 43 degrees in West Palm Beach.
More than 91,000 homes and businesses were in the dark in Maine Christmas morning, and restoration for many could be days away, according to utility crews.
Still, even as a major utility warned of rolling blackouts that could affect 65 million people in the eastern US, crews had worked to turn the juice on for hundreds of thousands of people in time for Christmas morning.
Only about 6,500 customers were in the dark in North Carolina, down from a high of nearly a half million. Outside of Maine, much of the rest of New England had power restored, a day after some 273,000 customers in the region were in the dark.
Many stranded arrivals at the Truth Urban Ministry in Buffalo on Christmas Eve had ice and snow plastered to their clothes, as their faces were frozen red by temperatures in the single digits.
“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,” shelter worker Vivian Robinson said.
“Those who are here are really enjoying themselves. It’s going to be a different Christmas for everyone.”
With Post wires
