U.S. winter storm claims at least 50 lives, over half in western New York

The death toll from a pre-Christmas blizzard in much of the United States has risen to 50, authorities say, with the number in western New York alone hitting27 as rescue and recovery efforts continued Monday.

The dead have been found in their cars andhomes, and in snowbanks, and some perishedwhile shovelling snow. Rescue and recovery efforts from the days-long storm continuedMonday.

On Friday and Saturday, in one of the worst-hit regions in the country, the blizzard roared throughwestern New York,stranding motorists, knocking out power and preventing emergency crews from reaching residents in frigid homes and stuck cars.

President Joe Biden said his prayers were with the victims' families, and on Monday offered federal assistance to the hard-hit state.

Huge snowdrifts nearly covered cars Monday and there were thousands of houses, some adorned in unlit holiday displays, that have been dark from a lack of power.

The storm is expected to claim more lives because it trapped some residents inside houses and knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.

Over half of U.S. population faced advisory or warning

Scientists said that the warming earth may have contributed to the intensity of the storm. That's because the atmosphere can carry more water vapour, which acts as fuel, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University, likened a single weather event to an "at-bat" in baseball and the climate as your "batting average."

"It's hard to say," Serreze said. "But are the dice a little bit loaded now? Absolutely."

There may be some relief this week from the extreme weather,which has stretched from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico,asforecasts are calling for temperatures in the U.S. to slowly rise, said Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

"Nothing like what we had last week," he said, adding the bomb cyclone when atmospheric pressure dropsquickly in a strong storm has weakened.

In the meantime, the recovery work continues.About 60 per cent of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, as temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians.

On Monday, some 2,085 domestic and international flights were cancelled as of about noon ET, according to the tracking site FlightAware. The site said Southwest Airlines had 1,253 cancellations nearly a third of its scheduled flights and about five times as many as any other major U.S. carrier. An email to Southwest was not immediately returned and the Dallas-based airline hadn't updated its website about the conditions since Saturday.

Based on FlightAware data, there werefrom cancellations and delays atairports across the U.S., including Denver, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Seattle, Baltimore and Chicago.

In Buffalo in recent days, there werehurricane-force winds and snow causing whiteout conditions that paralyzed emergency response efforts.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said almost every fire truck in Buffalo was stranded Saturday,and implored people Sunday to respect an ongoing driving ban in the region. The National Weather Service said the snow total at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport stood at 1.25metres at 10a.m. ET Monday. Officials said the airport would be shut through Tuesday morning.

With snow swirling down untouched and impassable streets, the service also said Monday that up to 23more centimetres of snow could fall in some areas through Tuesday.

WATCH | Buffalo in recovery mode after powerful blizzard:

After the storm in Buffalo

2 years ago

Duration 0:39

Western New York is digging out after a powerful blizzard blasted the region over Christmas weekend, killing at least 27 people.

Two people died in their suburban Cheektowaga, N.Y., homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarzsaid 10 more people died there during the storm, including six in Buffalo. Describingthe blizzard as "the worst storm in our lifetime," he warned more may be reported dead.

"Some were found in cars, some were found on the street in snowbanks," Poloncarz said. "We know there are people who have been stuck in cars for more than two days."

Family stuckin Buffalo while heading to Hamilton

Freezing conditions and power outages leftpeople in Buffaloscrambling to get to anywhere with heat amid what Hochul called the longest sustained blizzard conditions ever in the city.

Ditjak Ilunga of Gaithersburg, Md., was on his way to visit relatives in Hamilton inOntariofor Christmas with his daughters Friday when their SUV was trapped in Buffalo. Unable to get help, they spent hours with the engine running, buffeted by wind and nearly buried in snow.

By 4 a.m. Saturday, their fuel nearly gone, Ilunga made a desperate choice to risk the howling storm to reach a nearby shelter. He carried six-year-old Destiny on his back while 16-year-old Cindy clutched their Pomeranian puppy, following his footprints through drifts.

"If I stay in this car, I'm going to die here with my kids," Ilunga recalled thinking. He cried when the family walked through the shelter doors. "It's something I will never forget in my life."

In a nearby home, Shahida Muhammad told WKBW, a local TVstation, that she had a desperate weekend after an outage knocked out power to her year-old son's ventilator. She and the child's father manually administered breaths from Friday until Sunday when rescuers saw her desperate social media posts and came to their aid.

Erie County officials said they went to the family's home Saturday, but no one came to the door. Muhammad said they were there, but thankfully her son was doing well despite the ordeal. She described him as "a fighter."

The storm knocked out power in communities from Maine to Seattle. The mid-Atlantic grid operator had called for its 65 million consumers to conserve energy amid the freeze Saturday.

WATCH | Buffalo residents, emergency crews clear the snow-filledstreets:

Buffalo digs out after blizzard

2 years ago

Duration 0:24

Residents and emergency crews in Western New York work to clear the streets after a powerful winter storm pummelled the region over Christmas weekend, leaving at least 27 people dead.

Storm-related deathswere reported all over the country, fromsix motorists who diedbecause ofcrashes in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky, anda woman who fell through Wisconsin river ice.

In Jackson, Miss.,city officials on Christmas Day announced residents must now boil their drinking water due to water lines bursting in the frigid temperatures.