YEREVAN, DECEMBER 26, ARTSAKHPRESS. The prolonged winter storm that brought heavy snow, high winds and brutal cold to most of the US this past week has killed at least 37 people and had hundreds of thousands without power on Christmas morning, CNN reports.
According to CNN, the worst impact was around Buffalo, New York, where 43 inches of snow fell as of Sunday morning.
The snowfall and blizzard conditions made roads impassable, froze power substations and left more than a dozen people dead, Erie County officials said.
The conditions eased slightly on Sunday, allowing emergency responders to get out and see the extent of the problem.
“I don’t want to say that this is going to be it because that would be a fallacy for me to say that, because we know that there are people who have been stuck in cars for more than two days,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said Sunday. “There are people in homes who are below freezing temperatures.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called it the “most devastating storm in Buffalo’s long storied history” due to its power and its extended length.
“It’s a crisis of epic proportion,” Hochul told CNN’s Paula Reid on Sunday.
Thousands of flights have been cancelled.
