By AccuWeather meteorologist
Published Nov. 19, 2022 11:52 AM EST | Updated Nov. 20, 2022 5:07 AM EST
Residents in western and upstate New York were given a clearer picture of the scope of the state's most significant lake-effect event in years as the monstrous bands pouring off Lake Erie and Lake Ontario that unleashed more than 6 feet of snow temporarily lifted northward on Saturday. The storm has been blamed for several deaths, and AccuWeather meteorologists warned that Mother Nature had not quite turned off the lake-effect faucet just yet.
Since Thursday, Nov. 17, Orchard Park, New York, home to the NFL's Buffalo Bills, has recorded a whopping 77 inches of snow, just 7 inches shy of 7 feet. The Bills were scheduled to play the Cleveland Browns at home on Sunday afternoon, but the NFL decided on Thursday to move the game indoors to Ford Field in Detroit. The Bills posted pictures on Twitter Friday showing the mountains of snow that had built up in the stadium with the rows of seats becoming nearly unrecognizable. The Bills landed in Detroit on Saturday evening, where the team will play their next two games.
If confirmed by the New York state climatology office, the more than 5 feet of snow that fell in Orchard Park on Friday alone would set a new state record for most snowfall within a 24-hour period. The old record stands at 50 inches from Camden, New York, in 1966.
The intense snowstorm left at least two people dead on Friday, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz announced. In Erie County, two residents died from cardiac arrest “related to exertion during shoveling/snow blowing.” Erie County Emergency Services officials stressed “smart” shoveling to residents Saturday morning, stating that shoveling heavy and wet snow can cause back injuries as well as heart attacks.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called the event "extreme" in a press conference on Thursday before the worst of the snow began as a state of emergency began to be issued for nearly a dozen counties. Ahead of the first snowflakes, over 300 plows, 5,700 power crews and members of the National Guard were deployed or placed on standby.
On Saturday morning, 70 members of the National Guard were deployed to southtowns. On Saturday afternoon, the amount of National Guard members dispatched more than doubled to 150, according to CBC.
Travel became nearly impossible for trucks and snow plows as the snow poured down at a rate of 3-5 inches per hour at times, making it difficult for crews to keep the roads visible. Reports of thundersnow were prolific amid the intense band streaming off of Lake Erie and videos showed a wall of snow moving toward Buffalo at one point. A waterspout was also reported on Friday over Lake Erie, another sign of just how potent the weather system affecting the region had become.
Denis Marszalkowski uses a snowblower to dig out after an intense lake-effect snowstorm impacted the area on Nov. 18, 2022 in Hamburg, New York. (John Normile/Getty Images)
A travel ban was extended to include the entire city of Buffalo on Saturday and reports emerged of first responders getting stuck behind tractor-trailers that were unable to move onto secondary roads in Orchard Park.
"This is the problem we have been dealing with across the Southtowns," Poloncarz said on Twitter. "This is Abbott Road and Lake Avenue in Hamburg/[Orchard Park]. Tractor-trailers that are rarely on this road tried to get around the Thruway closure and got stuck. This is why we can't get to secondary roads/neighborhoods."
The Buffalo News reported that law enforcement officers wrote 300-plus tickets throughout the day on Friday to drivers who violated travel bans that were in place. Erie County officers hired private contractors to deliver additional equipment such as high-lifts and large trucks to help dig out communities in the Buffalo southtowns, the Buffalo News reported.
“Trucks stuck all over the place,” Extreme Meteorologist Reed Timmer said in a video update from the side of the New York State Thruway in Hamburg, New York, on Friday afternoon, saying the thruway basically looked like "a river of white as far as the eye can see."
Timmer pivoted to "on-foot-coverage" on Friday morning as travel by vehicle became unfeasible with waist-deep snow. By Saturday morning, snowfall totals in Hamburg had eclipsed 6 feet as some children took to sledding from the top of their family's completely buried SUV. Daylight revealed numerous motorists stuck in the parking lot of the hotel that Timmer and the rest of the AccuWeather crew hunkered down in during the storm.
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There were some signs of progress on Saturday morning as the Buffalo Niagara International Airport reopened its runways, following a temporary shutdown. Buffalo tallied a record-breaking 21.5 inches on Saturday, breaking the previous daily record of 7.6 inches set in 2014. AccuWeather meteorologists say that snow will continue there into Sunday.
The two intense bands that were streaming off of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario since Thursday shifted northward Saturday morning in a response to a wind direction change.
As expected, those bands shifted southward once again Saturday night, delivering additional snow to the hardest-hit areas along with strong winds that created blowing snow conditions. Experts say that these bands will become more oriented northwest to southeast on Sunday. AccuWeather forecasters believe that the heaviest snow may focus on areas in and around Oswego, New York, during this timeframe.
AccuWeather's winter weather experts had been warning about a significant and possibly historic lake-effect snow event days ahead of time. Forecasters noted mild lake water, bitterly cold air aloft and generally uniform wind direction through the lower part of the atmosphere as contributing factors to the extraordinary snowfall totals predicted.
As is typical in lake-effect scenarios, snowfall totals varied greatly over short distances as a result of the narrow width of the intense snow bands. North of Buffalo, the sun could be seen shining as light snow coated the University of Buffalo's football field on Friday. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Bills stadium, located 19 miles to the south, was completely buried with whiteout conditions.
Elsewhere around the Great Lakes region, one death was reported in the town of Hamlet, Indiana, when a snowplow driver was killed Friday after his vehicle slid off a roadway and rolled over, according to The Associated Press. Hamlet is located about 113 miles northwest of Indianapolis.
The wind direction off of Lake Michigan promoted several bands of intense lake-effect snow, as opposed to the singular bands that formed off of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, respectively. As a result, much of the western half of the lower peninsula of Michigan received 6-12 inches of snow, with localized higher amounts. Around 2 feet of snow fell in the northwestern part of the lower peninsula, as well as in the southwestern part of the upper peninsula.
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