Wednesday, December 15, 2021
On December 23, 2022, a once-in-a-generation blizzard buried Buffalo, New York, trapping people in cars and homes and killing dozens over the Christmas weekend.
On this day in 2022, a ferocious blizzard slammed into Buffalo, New York, on the Friday before Christmas. Winds over seventy miles an hour drove blinding snow into a whiteout that lasted for more than a day, and temperatures dropped fast enough to make being outside deadly within minutes. Dozens of people died over the holiday weekend.
Many of the deaths came from being caught in the open. People were trapped in stranded cars, stuck outside after venturing out for a short errand, or left without heat when the power failed. Even emergency crews could not move through streets that had vanished under drifting snow.
The lesson is that the safest move in a blizzard is usually to stay exactly where you are. Enough food, water, and backup warmth to shelter in place for several days, and the discipline not to drive into a whiteout, are what keep a winter storm from turning fatal.
