Great Lakes snowstorm blankets Northeast and Midwest, stranding motorists

Kimberly Stolar was glad to be off the roads in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Not that she had much choice: She couldn’t open her front door, no matter how hard she pushed against an estimated 50 inches of snow that had drifted over. She knew her SUV was somewhere in her driveway, but she couldn’t tell exactly where.

“I’m just trying today to ignore the fact that I can’t get out of my house, and just be thankful for what I have in my house,” said Stolar, 33, an Erie native who said this storm was the worst that she could recall.

More than 2 feet of snow blanketed western New York state and Pennsylvania on Saturday, with some parts getting more than 3 feet, as a lake-effect snowstorm disrupted post-Thanksgiving travel and stranded dozens of vehicles on highways. The storm threatened to bring up to 6 feet of snow to some areas by Tuesday morning.

The snowfall was heaviest along Interstate 90, the National Weather Service said, which hugs Lake Erie from Buffalo, New York, through Pennsylvania and on to Cleveland. Erie and parts of northern Michigan, eastern Ohio and western New York received around 30 inches of snow or more, the service said Saturday. National Guard troops were dispatched in New York and Pennsylvania.

Some of the most dramatic scenes of the storm were out of Erie. Its normally lively downtown was deserted, as fast-falling snow trapped residents inside their homes. Motorists barred from I-90 wound up stranded on two-lane highways, and truck owners towed cars out of ditches. Temporary shelters were set up for travelers who were stuck, where a few hundred people took refuge, according to Brenton Davis, the executive of Erie County, Pennsylvania.

The heavy snowfall was a lake-effect storm, caused by cold air pushing over the relatively warm waters of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, said Mitchell Gaines, lead meteorologist at the weather service in Binghamton, New York. The storms pick up moisture over the lakes and then dump it when they hit colder land, typically engulfing relatively small areas with huge amounts of snow.

Irina Miller, 38, was among the travelers who were stuck on the highway for hours Friday night. She was on her way to Columbus, Ohio, after spending Thanksgiving in Buffalo with her husband and 19-month-old daughter when traffic came to a stop near the Pennsylvania border.

On Friday night, Miller said, “We’ve kind of accepted that we are stranded and we don’t know what’s happening.” She said Saturday that she was in the clear after 2 a.m., and she finally reached home in the afternoon, about 24 hours after leaving Buffalo.

Towns across western New York were bracing for more snow, as Gov. Kathy Hochul, who declared a state of emergency Friday in nearly a dozen counties, warned that the worst was yet to come in the state. The most significant snowfall in western New York was expected to arrive Saturday and last into Sunday.

Parts of Buffalo could receive up to 20 inches of snow through Sunday, when the Bills were scheduled to host the San Francisco 49ers in nearby Orchard Park, New York. On Saturday, the storm prevented the delivery of the city’s daily paper, The Buffalo News, because of road closures and restrictions on commercial truck driving.

But not everyone was too concerned about the storm. Robert Warner, the manager of Cole’s, an Irish pub and restaurant in Buffalo, expected a snowy evening to be good for business.

“They bring people in, and then they don’t want to leave because they don’t want to go back outside,” he said of snowstorms.

Beginning Sunday evening, a shift in air flow is forecast to push the lake-effect snow into central New York, bringing 3 to 6 inches to the Syracuse area. Later in the week, another burst of Arctic air will hit western and central New York, but Michael Murphy, also a lead meteorologist at the weather service in Binghamton, said it was too early to say how much more snow was coming.

In northeastern Ohio, forecasters expect another 12 to 18 inches by Tuesday. In the Erie area, snow will keep falling until Tuesday morning, for a total accumulation of 4 feet or more, Murphy said.

Arctic air was expected to bring the coldest temperatures since mid-February to parts of the northern Great Plains into next week, the weather service said, with some areas of North Dakota recording wind chills of minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Subfreezing temperatures were also expected early Sunday in southern Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle.

A winter weather advisory was in effect across West Virginia; northern Kentucky; southern Illinois and Indiana; Missouri; and eastern Kansas.

On Saturday, Erie’s downtown area was eerily quiet on what should have been one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year. Stephanie Hunt, the owner of Copper Carriage, an antiques and home décor shop, was heartbroken at the postponement of a highly anticipated event featuring local vendors, restaurants and museums.

Hunt had looked forward to welcoming customers to her cheerfully decorated shop. Instead, she spent the day at her downtown home, where neighbors came together to check on one another and coordinate grocery runs.

“It is pretty,” she said of the snow. “But it can be pretty at 4 inches, not 4 feet.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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