Parts of the United States could see another 12 inches of snow after days of devastating snowstorms ravaged North America, as New York’s governor warned: “We know that the storm is coming back,” reports Sky.
The storm left at least 57 dead in the United States and four more in Canada after a bus overturned on the icy roads of British Columbia.
In the United States, 28 of the deaths occurred in upstate New York, most in Erie County, where the major city of Buffalo was hit hard.
President Joe Biden authorized federal support for upstate New York, where tens of thousands of people were thrown from power by the storm.
But temperatures dropped below normal from the Rocky Mountains east to the Appalachians, and places like Jackson, Mississippi were left without water as frozen pipes burst.
NBC News reported that in Buffalo, desperate residents flooded Facebook groups asking for help.
One person asked for replacement disposable diapers for twins and another asked for medication for a sick baby. Several people have placed rush orders for infant formula.
One Buffalo resident with four young children wrote, “Running really low on food, been stuck in our house… Slightly starting to panic when I looked outside and seen it snowing more,” reports Sky.
Municipal police said on Sunday there had been “isolated” cases of looting.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz described the blizzard as “probably the worst storm of our livetime,” warning, “This is not the end yet,” reports Sky.
He said some people were stranded in their cars for more than two days, with emergency services battling bad weather to reach those who needed help.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said over the weekend that many of the state’s ambulances and fire trucks were trapped in snow, and Buffalo police launched an online call to snowmobile owners for help.
On Monday, she called the storm “one for the ages,” adding that this and another major blizzard just over a month ago had brought nearly as much snow as one would expect to the area all winter.
People who had left their cars in search of warmth and safety were now trying to find them, many of the vehicles having been buried under snow.
Jim Dale, senior meteorologist at British Weather Services, told Sky News: “I was going to say this is a once in a lifetime experience. I think we’re probably going to see these kind of events a little bit more than that. In this instance, this is all to do with the dislocation of the Arctic polar vortex. So that means basically polar air channelling southwards. We saw it coming before it arrived. But the actual transition in terms of going from what you might call a mild situation to an absolute freeze happened in some states within an hour so you went down from from say 10 to 15 degrees down to -20 very quickly,” reports Sky.
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