A lake-effect storm continued to blanket parts of the Great Lakes region with snow on Saturday, closing highways on one of the biggest travel weekends of the year and prompting Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York to declare a state of emergency on Friday in 11 counties.
The snowstorm, which is expected to last through Tuesday, is forecast to bring more than 40 inches to some parts of New York, the National Weather Service said early Saturday.
Up to six feet of snow could bury counties east of Lake Erie before the storm passes, forecasters said, warning that some counties could be brought to a standstill.
The heaviest snow totals on Saturday morning were on the southern and northeastern shores of Lake Erie and east of Lake Ontario, where intense snow bands could continue to bring up to three inches an hour.
Nearly three feet of snow had already accumulated in Perrysburg, N.Y., about 30 miles south of Buffalo.
With roads slick and visibility poor from white-out conditions, travel could be potentially life-threatening, the Weather Service said.
“We are so accustomed to this kind of storm,” Ms. Hochul said in an interview with Spectrum News on Friday. “We don’t love it, but it is part of who we are as New Yorkers, especially western New York and the North Country.”
With nearly a dozen counties under a state of emergency, Ms. Hochul said that officials were “ready for the worst.”
In a statement on Friday, she said more than 100 members of the National Guard were staged in western New York to help.
The snow hampered travel on several interstates, and a section of Interstate 90 from Erie County, Pa., to Hamburg, N.Y., and westbound Interstate 86 up to the New York State line remained closed on Saturday. Commercial vehicles were banned on some routes as officials worked to clear traffic backups.
Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania said on social media on Saturday that he had signed a disaster declaration for Erie County and had dispatched the state’s National Guard to help stranded drivers.
Officials with the New York State Thruway Authority on Friday night could not say how many drivers were stranded, but said that the three-mile stretch from Ripley, N.Y., to the Pennsylvania border was the most difficult area to clear.
Late Friday, Irina Miller, 38, was entering her 10th hour of being stuck on that stretch. She was traveling home to Columbus, Ohio, after celebrating Thanksgiving in Buffalo with her husband and 19-month-old daughter when traffic came to stop near the Pennsylvania border.
“We’ve kind of accepted that we are stranded and we don’t know what’s happening,” Ms. Miller said about 11:30 p.m. “We’re just thankful that we have about a half tank of gas.”
The Weather Service warned of extreme effects from the storm through Monday. Whiteout conditions could make driving extremely dangerous or impossible in parts of those regions, it said.
The authorities in Canada issued similar warnings on Friday in Ontario. Some areas of the province were expected to get more than three feet of snow by Sunday afternoon because of squalls off Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.
According to AAA, the automobile organization, nearly 80 million people were expected to travel for Thanksgiving this year. About three million people in the United States were expected to travel by air on Sunday.
Lake-effect storms occur when cold air moves across a large body of warmer water. They typically occur in late fall and early winter.
“The lakes started out at basically a record warm for late November,” said David Roth, a forecaster with the Weather Service.
“Even in areas that are used to it, this is their first real lake-effect of the season,” he added. “They’re going to feel this. This will be a ‘Welcome to winter’ for them.”
Buffalo could receive up to six inches of snow through Sunday, when the Bills host the San Francisco 49ers at their stadium in nearby Orchard Park. The Buffalo Bills on Friday afternoon had called for shovelers to help clear the stadium during the winter season.
While the snow was expected to pile up, an Arctic blast was moving across the Northern Plains and the Midwest on Friday, with the wind chill across parts of the Dakotas and Minnesota plunging to 15 degrees below zero.
The Weather Service said on social media that the cold would persist into next week, with the Northern Plains and parts of the Midwest experiencing their lowest temperatures since mid-February.
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