BUFFALO, N.Y. — Piles of snow, in some places taller than most people, buried parts of western and northern New York as a lake-effect storm pounded areas east of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario for a third straight day Saturday, with possibly even more to come.
The snowfall in some spots ranked among the highest ever recorded in the area, rivaling the eye-popping amounts that fell during similar storms in 2014 and 1945. It wreaked havoc on some roadways, as trucks that took to smaller backroads to avoid a closure on parts of an interstate in the area ended up in mass gridlock that Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz described on social media as “tractor-trailer demo derby day.”
“Nothing was going to stop me from marrying her, no matter what,” Junge, 35, of North Tonawanda, New York, told The Associated Press.The snowfall forced the National Football League Partial sunshine and a break from the snow came in some of the hardest-hit areas south of Buffalo’s center Saturday as the snow bands shifted north.
Poloncarz tweeted that two people in the Buffalo area died “associated with cardiac events related to exertion during shoveling/snow blowing.”