Buffalo: Millions of people hunkered down in a deep freeze overnight and early morning to ride out the frigid storm that has killed at least 18 people across the United States, trapping some residents inside homes with heaping snow drifts and knocking out power to several hundred thousand homes and businesses.
The scope of the storm has been nearly unprecedented, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico.
About 60 per cent of the US population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, the National Weather Service said. Some 1,346 domestic and international flights were cancelled as of early Sunday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.
Forecasters said a bomb cyclone when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.
The storm unleashed its full fury on Buffalo, with hurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions, paralyzing emergency response efforts New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in the city was stranded and shutting down the airport through Monday, according to officials.
The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 43 inches (109 centimetres) at 7 am on Sunday. Freezing conditions and day-old power outages had Buffalonians scrambling Saturday to get out of their homes to anywhere that had heat. But with city streets under a thick blanket of white, that wasn't an option for people like Jeremy Manahan, who charged his phone in his parked car after almost 29 hours without electricity.
"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." Mark Poloncarz, executive of Erie County, home to Buffalo, said ambulances were taking more than three hours to make a single hospital trip and the blizzard may be "the worst storm in our community's history".
Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, New York, homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, he said, and another died in Buffalo.
"We can't just pick up everybody and take you to a warming centre. We don't have the capability of doing that," Poloncarz said. "Many, many neighbourhoods, especially in the city of Buffalo, are still impassable."
Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Maryland, was on his way to visit relatives in Hamilton, Ontario, for Christmas with his daughters Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo.
Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running in the vehicle buffeted by wind and nearly buried in snow.
By 4 am on Saturday, with their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby shelter.
He carried 6-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, stepping into his footprints as they trudged through drifts.