BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A battering winter storm knocked out power Saturday to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the United States, left millions more to worry about the prospect of further outages and crippled emergency response efforts, as well as an airport in snowbound New York state.
Across the country, officials have attributed at least 18 deaths to exposure, icy car crashes and other effects of the storm, including two people who died in their homes outside Buffalo, N.Y., when emergency crews could not reach them amid historic blizzard conditions.
Deep snow, single-digit temperatures and day-old power outages sent Buffalo residents scrambling Saturday to get out of their houses to anywhere that had heat. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the Buffalo Niagara International Airport will be closed through Monday morning, and almost every fire truck in Buffalo was stranded in the snow.
"No matter how many emergency vehicles we have, they cannot get through the conditions as we speak," Hochul said.
Blinding blizzards, freezing rain and frigid cold also knocked out power from Maine to Seattle, while a major electricity grid operator warned the 65 million people it serves across the eastern U.S. that rolling blackouts might be required.
Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection said power plants are having difficulty operating in the frigid weather and has asked residents in 13 states to refrain from unnecessary electricity use through at least this morning. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides electricity to 10 million people in Tennessee and parts of six surrounding states, directed local power companies to implement planned interruptions but ended the measure by Saturday afternoon.
Across the six New England states, more than 273,000 electric customers remained without power Saturday, with Maine the hardest hit, and some utilities saying it could be days before electricity is restored. PJM Interconnection also warned rolling blackouts might be required.
In North Carolina, 169,000 customers were without power Saturday afternoon, down from a peak of more than 485,000, but utility officials said rolling blackouts would continue for "the next few days."
In the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga, two people died in their homes Friday when emergency crews could not reach them in time to treat their medical conditions, according to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. He said another person died in Buffalo, and the blizzard may be "the worst storm in our community's history."
Forecasters said 28 inches of snow accumulated as of Saturday in Buffalo. More was expected overnight.
It was taking ambulances over three hours to do one trip to a hospital, in areas where an ambulance can get through the snow, Poloncarz said. Plows were on the roads, but large snow drifts, abandoned cars and downed power lines were slowing progress.
On the Ohio Turnpike, four died in a pileup involving some 50 vehicles. A Kansas City, Mo., driver was killed Thursday after skidding into a creek, and three others died Wednesday in separate crashes on icy, northern Kansas roads.
A utility worker in Ohio was also killed Friday while trying to restore power near Pedro in Lawrence County, according to the Buckeye Rural Electric Cooperative. A woman in Vermont died in a hospital Friday after a tree broke in the high winds and fell on her.
Police in Colorado Springs said they found the dead body of a person who appeared to be homeless, as subzero temperatures and snow descended on the region. Near Janesville, Wis., a 57-year-old woman died Friday after falling through the ice on a river, the Rock County sheriff's office announced.
In Lansing, Mich., an 82-year-old woman was found dead Friday morning, curled up in the snow outside of her assisted living community, Bath Township police reported. A snowplow driver found the woman as temperatures hovered around 10 degrees.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said one person died in a traffic accident attributed to the weather in western Kentucky, and a homeless person died in Louisville.
About 60% of the U.S. population, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico, faced some sort of winter weather advisory or warning, the National Weather Service said.
As millions of Americans were traveling ahead of Christmas, more than 2,360 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled Saturday, according to the tracking site FlightAware.
Forecasters said a bomb cyclone -- when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm -- developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.
Information for this article was contributed by Marc Levy, Corey Williams, John Raby, Maysoon Khan, Hannah Schoenbaum, Wilson Ring and John Hanna of The Associated Press.
A man tries to clear snow as a winter storm rolls through Amherst, N.Y., on Saturday. The same system knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the United States on Saturday. More photos at arkansasonline.com/1225winter22/. (AP/Jeffrey T. Barnes)Gallery: Winter weather, Dec. 24, 2022
