A picture from Cheektowaga that describes the Buffalo snowstorm perfectly

[wnylib]

11. Some things are beyond people's control

no matter how prepared they are.

You can have layers of warm clothing and blankets, flashlights, etc. and stay inside your own home, but when the power goes off for 3 full days while 70 mph winds are creating drifts as high as 18 feet while 4 feet of snow are falling, windows are blown out by the wind, and emergency agencies can't respond, there will be deaths.

We don't know why some people were buried in their cars or on foot in snow drifts because we don't have the details on the deaths yet. Maybe they were desperately seeking help for themselves or someone else when ambulances and fire trucks could not get to people. Maybe they were on their way to help someone else in a desperate situation. Maybe they just got off work and thought they could get home to ride out the blizzard.

No doubt that some were foolish to think that they could go somewhere in a blizzard this bad. They might have been over confident about their ability to handle it precisely because they were used to bad Buffalo winters. At the beginning of the blizzard they might have thought, like some posters here have said about the current conditions in Buffalo, "Oh I've seen worse" not knowing just how bad it would get in a short time.

I lived through a similar blizzard in Cleveland in 1978, so I have an idea just how bad this one got. This is the worst blizzard in Buffalo history, exceeding even what Buffalonians are used to dealing with.