Newsman: The growing death toll in the Buffalo area reached a grim milestone Tuesday after it surpassed the death toll in the Blizzard of January 1977 —which has been recorded as the region’s worst storm in recent history. people died over four days, including 12 who were found frozen in stranded cars,
The death toll in Erie County, in Buffalo — the area hardest hit in the storm — stood at 31 on Tuesday evening. The reported deaths included at least seven people who died due to having no heat and three who were found in vehicles, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said.
Along with burying the city with more than 50 inches of snow since Christmas Eve, the storm carried frigid temperatures and extreme winds — with gusts measured stronger than 70 mph at times, according to the National Weather Service.
Those conditions were expected to dissipate Wednesday as temperatures rise into the 40s and 50s throughout next week, allowing the region to slowly thaw and return to normal. While some rain was in the forecast, rain along with melted snow, could bring some slight flooding.
“It looks like the worst could be behind them,” Brian Thompson, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, told news media.
The 1977 “storm is the benchmark storm for the Buffalo area,” Thompson said. “This storm certainly seems like it now has become the deadliest storm in the Buffalo area.”
Thompson noted decades of blizzards across the U.S. that have left hundreds dead, including the 1993 Storm of the Century, which killed more than 300 people in more than a dozen states. It is regarded as the second-most costliest winter storm on record, according to federal weather records.
Conditions across the U.S. were also expected to warm, with some areas, including the Midwest, seeing temperatures 10 to 20 degrees above average, Thompson said.
President Joe Biden said his administration would hold airlines accountable for the mass cancellations and directed travelers to the Department of Transportation to see if they were eligible for compensation. The Department of Transportation said it would examine Southwest Airlines’ cancellations in particular, which accounted for the majority of disruptions.
On Wednesday, 2,750 flights were canceled within, into, or out of the U.S., according to FlightAware, leaving thousands of travelers stranded at airports across the country. And already over 2,300 flights were cancelled for Thursday.
