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Under more than 5 feet of snow, images and video are flooding social media in Buffalo. Shannon Rae Green shows the tweets and instagram videos of people stranded and digging out. (USA NOW, USA TODAY)
Bob Wilcox clears the snow at the end of his driveway on Nov. 19 on Bowen Road in Lancaster, N.Y.(Photo: Gary Wiepert, AP)
BUFFALO — Buffalo's first snowstorm of the season left several dead while record cold swept across most of the eastern half of the nation Wednesday.
At least five deaths in New York were blamed on the snow, including three from heart attacks while shoveling, officials said. Two other deaths were reported in New Hampshire and Michigan.
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The snow was still falling Wednesday with more than 5 feet already on the ground, and some areas south of the city are expected to get a year's worth of snow — almost 6 feet — in just three days.
While the worst of the eastern cold will ease Thursday, it will still be below-average, the weather service predicted. Also, another round of lake-effect snow is forecast to bring as much as three feet of snow in some regions on Thursday and Friday.
The highest total so far in New York was the 65 inches that fell near Cheektowaga, N.Y., the National Weather Service reported.
The national snowfall record for a 24-hour period is 76 inches, set in Silver Lake, Colo., in 1921. Some Buffalo suburbs approached that amount Tuesday, possibly the highest 24-hour snow in a populated area, the National Weather Service reported.
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Also, while a 77-inch total was once recorded in 24 hours in Montague, N.Y., near Lake Ontario in 1997, it was later declared "unofficial" because of a lack of quality control in the measurements.
"So as far as Lake Erie events, I think this week's event one will go down as the most extreme on record," said Christopher Burt, Weather Underground weather historian.
Meanwhile, for the second straight morning, temperatures in all 50 states fell to freezing or below overnight — including Hawaii, atop the high mountain summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island.
Tom Wilson, 28, of West Seneca, N.Y. , waist high in snow, took advantage of a respite in the snowfall to try to shovel his way down a Buffalo, N.Y., sidewalk, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2014.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Carolyn Thompson, AP)
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The cold spread across most of the eastern half of the U.S. on Wednesday morning. Record cold was reported in New York City (22 degrees at LaGuardia), Washington (13 degrees at Dulles), Raleigh, N.C. (19 degrees), and as far south as Jacksonville, Fla. (27 degrees).
In western New York, the cold just added to the misery of a massive snowfall. One death came from an accident in Cheektowaga, N.Y., where a vehicle was helping a stuck vehicle gain traction in the snow. When the stuck vehicle was able to back up, it pinned one of the men between the two vehicles. A 30-year-old from Pennsylvania died.
A 46-year-old man from Alden, N.Y., died in his car, which rescuers found buried in snow, officials said Wednesday.
This photo provided by Chelsea Andorka, the Niagara University women's basketball team spokeswoman, shows the team holding a sign while their bus was snowbound Nov. 18, 2014, on the New York State Thruway in the middle of a lake-effect storm that dropped more than 4 feet of snow near Lackawanna, N.Y.(Photo: Chelsea Andorka, AP)
Crews say some areas have so much snow that it's like plowing a brick wall. Rescuers, who have been using snowmobiles, also have been walking car to car to try to dig out people stuck in their vehicles. The last time a storm this huge hit was in December 2001, when 80 to 90 inches of snow fell on the region in a five-day period.
Dozens of drivers, including Caitlin Battaglia of Hamburg, N.Y., have been stranded on the New York State Thruway for more than 24 hours. She picked up her boyfriend at work late Monday, headed westbound on Interstate 90, got stuck and was stranded ever since without any contact from state police or Thruway officials, she said.
"We don't know when we're going to get out of here," she told WGRZ-TV via Facetime. "We don't have food. We don't have water. I think we're down to maybe a half tank of gas.
"The snow is coming down so much right now that I don't see us getting out of here for another day. It's bad, maybe even two days," Battaglia said.
Shoveling snow is indeed hard work: The weight of the snow on a typical Buffalo driveway is about 25 tons, WeatherBell meteorologist Ryan Maue estimated.
A bus with the Niagara University women's basketball team was stuck for more than 24 hours in the eastbound lanes of the same interstate after attempting to return from a game in Pittsburgh. State troopers eventually were able to pick them up and bring them to a nearby police station, Niagara guard Tiffany Corselli said.
Parts of Buffalo, N.Y., may see 70 inches of snow over a three-day period. Their usual average is 94 inches of snow per year. VPC
The Buffalo Bills' game on Sunday against the New York Jets is in jeopardy, as their stadium is buried under 220,000 tons of snow, according to the team. "We have not had this much snow, as far as we know, in the history of our team," said Andy Major, the Bills' vice president of operations and guest experience
Snow blown by strong winds forced the closing of a 132-mile stretch of the Thruway, the main highway across New York state.
In some cases, rescuers have been unable to use snowmobiles because of the way the snow has compacted and created drifts as high as 8 feet.
In New Hampshire and elsewhere, icy roads led to accidents. Lake-effect storms in Michigan produced gale-force winds and as much as 18 inches of snow, and canceled several flights at the Grand Rapids airport.
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Schools closed in the North Carolina mountains amid blustery winds and ice-coated roads. In Indiana, three firefighters were hurt when a semi-trailer hit a fire truck on a snowy highway.
In Atlanta, tourists Morten and Annette Larsen from Copenhagen were caught off-guard by the 30-degree weather as they took photos of a monument to the 1996 Summer Olympics at Centennial Olympic Park.
"It's as cold here as it is in Denmark right now. We didn't expect that," Larsen said, waving a hand over his denim jacket, buttoned tightly over a hooded sweatshirt.
Contributing: Michael Wooten, WGRZ-TV, Buffalo, N.Y.; The Associated Press
How does the lake effect work and why does it create so much snowfall? Shannon Rae Green explains. (News, USA TODAY)
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