Lake-effect snow buries parts of the Great Lakes, shuts down I-90

MADISON, Ohio – Great Lakes communities were pummeled with snow this weekend as unusually warm weather plunged into a lake-effect snow event, expected to continue until Monday.

At least 30 inches had fallen in several places in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and along Lake Erie’s shore in northern Pennsylvania and western New York, the National Weather Service said Saturday. At noon, the weather service tracked about 35 inches in Cassadaga, New York, about 40 miles southwest of Buffalo.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency for parts of the state’s north and west, including the city of Buffalo, and said the National Guard was helping.

Erie County, Pennsylvania, declared a snow disaster, urging residents and visitors to “please stay home, stay safe, and allow plow crews and first responders to do their work.”

Road closures in the region included parts of Interstate 90 in Pennsylvania and New York, disrupting motorists traveling between Cleveland and Buffalo on one of the busiest holiday travel weekends of the year. Commercial vehicles were barred from I-90 between Rochester and the Pennsylvania border.

Stranded travelers, some covered in snow, took refuge in the lobby of a sold-out Hampton Inn in Madison, Ohio, lamenting interrupted journeys and recounting difficult drives.

Conditions were particularly rough along Lake Erie between Painesville and Madison. Small sedans struggled to navigate the snow-coated roadways – skidding, sliding and creeping along in a fight against rapidly piling snow. Cars got stuck in snow banks along the side of I-90. At times, visibility through windshields was severely restricted to a blur of white.

Phyllis and Kevin Buckland set out from Omaha early Friday with a back seat full of Christmas gifts for grandchildren in Elmira, New York. But about 800 miles into the 18-hour journey, the snow became impassable.

“Even with two or three cars in front of us, you could barely see where the tire tracks were,” Phyllis Buckland said. “It was real windy, so there were a lot of drifts. It was just too much. We’re older, and I just can’t do it anymore. My nerves were shot.”

“We’ll go there via Florida,” Kevin Buckland joked, as snow swirled outside the hotel.

Two states away, Aunt Millie’s Family Restaurant and Bakery has served truck drivers and the small western New York community of Irving for 37 years.

But not Saturday.

Emily Cornwall, who runs her family’s restaurant, said they used to tough out storms to stay open, but road closures and about 2 feet of snow were too onerous. The restaurant sits right off the state freeway, which was blocked off late Friday.

“We don’t want to risk our employee safety, and how many customers are you really going to get at this point?” she said. “The first responders and tow truck drivers depend on us to be open.”

The inconvenience of contacting about 50 employees was worthwhile to keep them safe, Cornwall said, but there is a growing possibility that the area might still have dangerous driving conditions through the weekend.

“We have employees that need these hours at this time of year,” she said.

Lake-effect snow occurs when very cold air passes over markedly warmer water. The cold air gathers moisture and then rises because of the heat, creating snow bands, which are carried by the wind.

The water temperature of the Great Lakes is at record warm levels, and the frigid air traveling over it this week arrived from Siberia, creating ideal conditions for heavy lake-effect snow.

The Arctic winds will cause temperatures to plummet throughout the eastern half of the country into next week, the National Weather Service said.

Lake-effect snowfall – buffeted from the Great Lakes to the Upper Peninsula and western Michigan, northeastern Ohio, northwestern Pennsylvania and portions of Upstate New York – is expected to continue into Monday, when the location of the heaviest snow bands are forecast to shift slightly southward.

On Saturday, two particularly intense snow bands were expected: one extending from near Ashtabula County, Ohio, across Erie, Pennsylvania, and into the southtowns of Buffalo; and another near Watertown, New York, and the Tug Hill Plateau.

A third strong snow band was expected to affect the region between Parry Sound and Gravenhurst in Ontario, east of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay.

Over the next two days, up to four feet of additional snow could fall in the heaviest bands. Snow-related storm watches and warnings stretched from northeastern Ohio to Upstate New York on Saturday afternoon, and some peppered northern Michigan.

Kristen Clunk, 42, a Hampton Inn employee in Madison, said the storm was the worst she’d seen in years. She had spent the night tending the hotel’s bustling bar, shoveling the sidewalk and answering a constantly ringing phone.

“It’s always really interesting to see people who don’t understand lake effect,” she said. “It doesn’t stop. If it does stop and you think you’re safe, in two minutes it could be a complete whiteout again.”

Though there was an upside, she added – “this is great snowball-making snow.”

Lee reported from Washington and Vinall from Seoul. Ben Noll in Auckland, New Zealand, and Adela Suliman in London contributed to this report.