Lake-effect snow buries communities in New York and Pennsylvania

AccuWeather

Record-breaking snow over the Thanksgiving weekend destroyed barns, shut down traffic and led to extreme conditions from the Midwest into the Northeast.

Transcript

00:00Our top story is this lake affects snow in the Midwest and Northeast here Bri.

00:04Yeah that has buried some communities in feet of snow and on top of that we are also talking about

00:11waves of cold to help support this snow Jeff. Absolutely and we want to get a closer look at

00:16what's going on out there. We're going to be joined now by storm chaser Aaron Rigsby. He's

00:20been hard at work through the holiday weekend all over much of northwest PA, parts of Ohio,

00:25and western New York right now. So Aaron you're about halfway between Buffalo and Erie. It looks

00:31cold out there. This has been an amazing event here. Yeah good evening Jeff. You got that right.

00:37I tell you I think 2024 is just the year of extremes. It seems like every weather event I

00:42cover it breaks some sort of record with this lake event. The lake effect event being no exception.

00:48Up where I was a little closer to Watertown they received upwards of 65 inches of snow. Now for

00:54some perspective on that, Cleveland Ohio their entire year they typically see about 63 inches of

01:00snow and they got that in just three days. Now a little bit further to the south here in Dunkirk

01:04they also received 40 to 50 inches of snow and unfortunately that came with some dire consequences

01:09as I came across a barn earlier that had unfortunately collapsed and an unknown amount

01:14of cattle was unfortunately killed in that barn while the owners scrambled to get a bunch of the

01:19snow off of their other barn to prevent another collapse. What a mess out there. So Aaron you were

01:24downwind of Lake Ontario you mentioned and the Tugul Plateau is not for the faint of heart

01:30here in events like this. So what was the most memorable part of this experience for you?

01:36No doubt about it the amount of thunder snow that was associated with that intense lake

01:41effect snow band. We were actually helping a motorist out of the ditch and we saw multiple

01:46flashes of lightning and multiple loud claps of thunder. Now I tell people that thunder during

01:52thundersnow sounds so much different than you might typically see from a thunderstorm because

01:56it's so muffled by all of the snow on the ground and I was just absolutely fascinated by that. I've

02:02seen lightning flashes before associated with these you know snow events but I've never seen

02:06so many flashes of lightning and so many claps of thunder and the snowfall rates that were coming

02:11down at one point were exceeding four to five inches an hour especially in some of the higher

02:16elevation area closer to Copenhagen. And Aaron what's your next plan here? I know that you've

02:20made big steps farther west now west of Buffalo almost as far west as Erie. What's your game plan

02:26here for this final stage of this event as the next surge of arctic air comes in?

02:32Yeah so the goal right now I made my way a little bit further south and west because

02:36up closer to Watertown their event is starting to wrap up but that's not going to be the case

02:41especially closer to Erie and Dunkirk Pennsylvania where a lake effect snow warning does remain into

02:45effect until tomorrow morning and they could receive upwards of another foot of snow on top

02:50of what they've already gotten. So I made my way down here I'm going to cover those impacts that

02:53it's inevitably going to have as the work week starts to get going and a lot of those folks

02:57start making their way to and from work we're going to probably see lots of problems again

03:02on interstate 90. Amazing footage here from Copenhagen New York there where they look like

03:07eggs or something like that cars that in some cases are entirely covered and you just see these

03:12mounds car-shaped mounds of snow with not even the antenna poking up from a few of them. So

03:17impressive stuff there Aaron be safe as again I know that a lot of the travel hazards you're going

03:22to be in the middle of there along the New York throughway and maybe farther southwest there into

03:26Pennsylvania as well. So great coverage as always Aaron Rigsby you can find many of his videos on

03:31AccuWeather.com and the AccuWeather app as well.

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