High winds cut power, inundate Lake Erie shoreline with ice

BUFFALO, N.Y. – High winds howled through much of the nation’s eastern half for a second day Monday, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, closing schools, and pushing dramatic mountains of ice onto the shores of Lake Erie.

Wind gusts of hurricane force – 74 mph – or higher were reported around the region, including West Virginia and New York. A motorist in Sandusky, Ohio, captured video of a tractor-trailer flipping over on a bridge .

Toppled trees and power poles, easy targets for strong winds that uprooted them from ground saturated by rain and snowmelt, plunged homes and businesses into darkness, though in most places power was expected back quickly as winds died down by the end of Monday. Hundreds of schools were delayed or canceled in New York alone.

The wind peeled off roofs in places. In Syracuse, New York, scaffolding blown off a building knocked down power lines.

Wind advisories and warnings were in effect through Monday in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast up to northern New England.

Giant chunks of ice spilled over the banks of the Niagara River across from Buffalo on Sunday, creating a jagged, frosty barrier between the river and a scenic road.

Dramatic footage captured by park police in Ontario showed the massive chunks roiling onto shore. High winds had raised water levels on the eastern end of Lake Erie in a phenomenon known as a seiche and then, according to the New York Power Authority, driven ice over a boom upstream from the river.

Ice mounds 25 to 30 feet high also came ashore farther south, piling up on several lakefront properties in suburban Hamburg.

“We’ve had storms in the past, but nothing like this,” resident Dave Schultz told WGRZ. “We’ve never had the ice pushed up against the walls and right up onto our patios. … It’s in my patio, the neighbor’s patio, and the patio after that.”

A voluntary evacuation for the area was issued Sunday.

Mount Washington, at 6,288 feet the Northeast’s highest peak and one renowned for its extreme weather, recorded a gust of 144 mph.

Empty tractor-trailers and empty tandem trucks have been banned on some highways. Trucks were also banned on some bridges in New York City, where the winds sent litter swirling in the canyons between skyscrapers and rocked sidewalk food carts precariously.