Some storm-weary residents of the US’s Great Lakes region have seen continued snowfall in recent days and are facing the prospect of even more accumulations this week.
Lake-effect snow warnings were in place through Tuesday night in parts of Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania. That was after lake-effect snow fell on parts of western New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio that were already blanketed with a foot or more over the past four days.
By Monday, more than 5ft of snow had fallen east of Lake Ontario in the past four days, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Snow was forecast through Tuesday in the largely rural area south of Buffalo.
“It was so much, so quick, that we got buried,” said Rebecca Chamberlin, who lives in the village of Cassadaga, New York, east of Lake Erie with her husband and two sons. She has been struggling to keep up with the bands of sometimes wet and heavy snow. “If it had been, you know, over a period of a week or more, it wouldn’t have been so bad.”
Heavy lake-effect snow caused a barn to collapse in the town of Arkwright, New York, killing five cows and trapping about 100 others, officials said on Monday in a Facebook post. Emergency crews were working late into the day in deep snow to rescue the animals. Officials urged farmers to check their barns and buildings for any signs of stress or damage from the continuing snow.
In Ohio, the quaint village of Geneva-on-the-Lake had more than 4ft of snow, and more is in the forecast through the rest of the week, according to the NWS.
“At this point, it’s just annoying,” said Ryan Colby, who lives a snowball’s toss from Lake Erie in the Ohio village. “We’ve just been getting hit left and right with it. I’ve been getting up every couple hours and shoveling out the driveway and the porch just so we don’t get too, too buried again.”
Winter storm warnings or advisories also were posted through Tuesday in Michigan, up and down the Lake Michigan coast, where as much as a foot of snow was predicted. Farther inland, some communities canceled school, including Gaylord, where more than 3ft of snow has fallen since Thanksgiving.
“Last year at this time we still had green grass,” said Mike Williams, who has a snow removal business in Gaylord. “To get it all at once overwhelmed everyone.”
In south-west Michigan, a crash involving about 14 passenger vehicles and three semi-trucks critically injured a driver and temporarily shut down Interstate 94 near Hartford in both directions during whiteout conditions on Monday, the Michigan state police posted on the social platform X. Officials say the crash was likely caused by people driving too fast in the snowy conditions. More than a dozen “vehicle slide offs” had also been reported in the area, with police warning drivers to slow down.
Skies were clear east of Lake Ontario in northern New York, where some residents were still digging out from mountains of snow.
In Ohio, the mayor of Geneva-on-the-Lake has been using a backhoe almost nonstop since Thursday to clear the snow.
“Every business down here has been shut down the last four days,” the mayor, Dwayne Bennett, said. “You can’t even get in the front doors.”
He added: “The problem is we’re not equipped to handle this much snow in this amount of time.”
Officials faced similar problems in snow-bound Erie, Pennsylvania, where 3 to 4ft of snow fell since Thursday, and accumulations on the ground were particularly wet and heavy.
Up to 17in of snow fell in Alaska’s capital city of Juneau over the weekend as part of a system that was “definitely stronger” than what the region typically experiences this time of year, the NWS meteorologist Greg Spann said.
School went to remote learning in the city on Monday, and state offices were closed due to freezing rain. Ice encased the thin branches on some trees.
The rest of Juneau’s week is expected to be very different. Forecasts calling for rain and unusually warm temperatures in the 40s F (between 4.4 and 10C).
