Pennsylvania town is buried under epic 165cm snowfall, and more is on the way

A storm that has dumped more than 165cm of snow this week on Erie, Pennsylvania, is expected to slightly taper off after leaving drifts that buried cars, paralysed the area and made the county declare an emergency.

But the respite for Erie, a city of about 100,000 in northwest Pennsylvania on the shores of Lake Erie, is expected to be short-lived, with a fresh round of winter storms coming Thursday night predicted to bring as much as 25cm more snow, forecasters said.

“This is a crippling snow event,” said Zach Sefcovic, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland.

“They are no strangers to snow in that part of the state, but this much snow in that short a time is just unprecedented,” he said in a telephone interview.

Large parts of the United States were gripped by freezing weather, with an area stretching from Montana to Maine expected to see temperatures of -12 degrees Celsius early on Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

The winter blast in Erie was caused by cold Arctic air moving over the lake, which had relatively mild water temperatures, forecasters said.