Nationwide, a new surge of Arctic air moved into the Great Lakes and Northeast on Tuesday with snow, frigid temperatures and strong winds, following a bomb cyclone that barreled across the Midwest and left tens of thousands of customers without power. The National Weather Service said blustery winds added to the chill, with temperatures falling below freezing as far south as the Florida panhandle.
Forecasters said parts of the Plains and Great Lakes saw sharply colder air and a mix of snow, ice and rain earlier in the week, and that the system intensified quickly enough to meet bomb cyclone criteria. As the weather shifted, the NWS said the frigid air trailing behind the storm was expected to spread across much of the eastern two-thirds of the country and fuel the lake-effect “snow machine” in areas downwind of the Great Lakes.
Power outages spread alongside the storm. More than 115,000 customers were without power Tuesday morning nationwide, with around a third of them in Michigan, Poweroutage.us reported. The storm’s wind and cold prompted travel and safety warnings as conditions deteriorated in multiple areas.
In parts of western and upstate New York, officials and forecasters cited significant snowfall totals from Monday, with some areas seeing a foot or more and totals potentially reaching up to 3 feet (91 centimeters) this week. The weather service also said strong winds knocked down trees and wires across the region, including an 81 mph gust in Buffalo on Monday.
“It took her four hours to get to the Minneapolis airport on Tuesday,” Kristen Schultz, who said she was heading home to Alaska, described about the difficulty traveling during the storm. She advised people to “Just give yourself plenty of extra time” so they would not be stressed if conditions worsened, and “and you’re ready in case things don’t go so smoothly,” she said.
Whiteout conditions were still possible in some areas, the weather service said, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned people in impacted areas to avoid unnecessary travel. Videos posted on social media showed people struggling to walk in the windy conditions, while downtown Buffalo saw a waterway clogged with branches and other debris linked to wind-driven surge from Lake Erie.
In Lackawanna, just south of Buffalo, Diane Miller was caught on video being blown off her daughter’s house front steps and landing in bushes, and she told WKBW-TV she was not seriously hurt. She said, “I opened her door and the wind caught me, and I went flying,” describing what happened.
The wind also shaped conditions around Lake Erie and beyond. The weather service said fierce winds on Lake Erie sent water surging toward the basin’s eastern end near Buffalo, while lowering water levels on the western side in Michigan exposed normally submerged lakebed, including the wreck of a car and a snowmobile.
In Monroe, Michigan, Kevin Aldrich, 33, a maintenance worker, said he had never seen the lake recede so much. He posted photos on social media showing wooden pilings sticking up from the muck and said, “Where those are at would typically be probably 12 feet deep,” adding that “We can usually drive our boat over them.”
Farther inland, dangerous wind chills dropped as low as minus 30 F (minus 34 C) across parts of North Dakota and Minnesota on Monday, and the National Weather Service said rare nearly hurricane-force winds were recorded on a mountain near Dolly Sods in northeast West Virginia. On the West Coast, strong Santa Ana winds with isolated gusts above 70 mph (112 kph) brought down trees in parts of Southern California after recent storms saturated the soil, and downed powerlines forced the shutdown of a freeway north of Los Angeles for several hours on Monday.
Rain on New Year’s Day could potentially soak the Rose Parade in Pasadena for the first time in about two decades, forecasters said, while wind advisories had expired by evening but blustery conditions were expected to continue into Saturday, along with thunderstorms, according to the NWS.