New York winter storm death toll at 28 with more snow on the way

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Buffalo residents gathered around space heaters, hunted for cars buried in snow drifts and looked for more victims on Monday, after 28 people died in one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit western New York state.

The rest of the United States was reeling from the ferocious winter storm, with at least another two dozen deaths reported.

Up to 9in more snow could fall in some areas of western New York through Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

“This is not the end yet,” said the Erie county executive, Mark Poloncarz, calling the blizzard “the worst storm probably in our lifetime”, even for an area accustomed to punishing snow.

Some people, he noted, were stranded in their cars for more than two days.

Joe Biden said his prayers were with the victims’ families, and offered federal assistance to the hard-hit state.

Those who lost their lives around Buffalo were found in cars, homes and snowbanks. Some died while shoveling, others when emergency crews could not respond to medical crises.

Melissa Carrick, a doula, said the blizzard forced her to coach a pregnant client through childbirth by telephone. An ambulance crew transported the woman to a hospital about 45 minutes south of Buffalo because no closer hospitals were reachable.

“In any other normal Buffalo storm? I would just go because that’s what you do – just drive through the snow,” she said. “But you knew this was different.”

Scientists say climate change may have contributed to the intensity of the storm. That is because the atmosphere can carry more water vapor, which acts as fuel, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, likened a single weather event to an “at-bat” – and the climate as your “batting average”.

“It’s hard to say,” Serreze said. “But are the dice a little bit loaded now? Absolutely.”

The blizzard roared across western New York on Friday and Saturday. With many grocery stores in the Buffalo area closed and driving bans in place, some pleaded on social media for donations of food and diapers.

“It was like looking at a white wall for 14 to 18 hours straight,” Poloncarz, the county official, said.

Relief is coming later this week, as forecasts call for temperatures to slowly rise, said Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist with the NWS.

Cook said the bomb cyclone – when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm – has weakened. It developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions including heavy winds and snow.

Some 3,410 domestic and international flights were canceled on Monday, according to the tracking site FlightAware. The site said Southwest Airlines had 2,497 cancellations – about 60% of its scheduled flights and about 10 times as many as any other major US carrier.

Southwest said the weather was improving, which would “stabilize and improve our situation”.

Based on FlightAware data, airports all across the US were suffering cancellations and delays, including Denver, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Seattle, Baltimore and Chicago.

The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, toured the aftermath in Buffalo – her home town – on Monday, calling the blizzard “one for the ages”. Almost every fire truck in the city became stranded on Saturday, she said.

Hochul noted the storm came a little over a month after the region was blanketed with another “historic” snowfall. Between the two storms, snowfall totals are not far off from the 95.4in the area normally sees in an entire winter season.

The NWS said the snow total at Buffalo Niagara international airport stood at 49.2in at 10am on Monday. Officials say the airport will be shut through Wednesday.

Shahida Muhammad told WKBW an outage knocked out power to her one-year-old son’s ventilator. She and the child’s father manually administered breaths from Friday until Sunday when rescuers saw her social media posts and came to their aid. She said her son was doing well despite the ordeal and described him as “a fighter”.

The storm knocked out power from Maine to Seattle. Storm-related deaths were reported nationwide, including at least eight killed in crashes in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky. A woman fell through Wisconsin river ice, and there was a fatal fire at a Kansas homeless camp.

In Jackson, Mississippi, crews struggled to get water through the beleaguered water system, authorities said. Many areas had no water or low water pressure. On Christmas Day, residents were told to boil drinking water due to water lines bursting in frigid temperatures.

“The issue has to be significant leaks in the system that we have yet to identify,” the city said on Monday.