Washingto : The death toll from a Buffalo-area blizzard rose to 27 in western New York, authorities said Monday as the region reeled from one of the worst weather-related disasters in its history. Much of the rest of the United States was hit by ferocious winter conditions.
The dead around Buffalo were found in their cars, homes and in snowbanks. Some died while shoveling snow.
The storm that walloped much of the country is now blamed for at least 49 deaths nationwide, with rescue and recovery efforts continuing Monday.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz described the blizzard as “the worst storm probably in our lifetime” and warned there may be more dead. Some people, he noted, were stranded in their cars for more than two days.
Scientists said that the warming earth may have contributed to the intensity of the storm.
That’s because the atmosphere can carry more water vapor, which acts as fuel, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The National Weather Service said Monday that up to 9 more inches of snow could fall in some areas through Tuesday.
Extreme weather stretched from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico.
About 60% of the U.S. population faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, and temperatures plummeted drastically below normal from east of the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians.
Some 2,085 domestic and international flights were canceled on Monday as of about noon EDT, 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.
