New York State is braced to be hit by another "wall of snow" to fall today, after a record-breaking freezing storm trapped thousands in their homes and killed seven.
Almost a year's worth of snow has fallen in three days in Western areas of the state, in one of the worst storms in living memory which is set to continue on Thursday. The fall is so heavy that it is being measured in feet, rather than the conventional inches.
The Buffalo area was buried under more than five feet of snow and two or three more feet will be piled on top of that today.
A man drives with a huge block of snow on the roof of his car after the unprecedented storm
Temperatures dropped to freezing or below in all of the 50 US states when the snow storm hit on Tuesday.
Drivers and truckers were stranded in their vehicles for more than 24 hours, after the storm trapped more than 100 vehicles along a 132-mile stretch of the New York State Thruway road, which was still closed on Wednesday.
Many people were stranded in offices, and one woman, Bethany Hojnacki, went into labor at the height of the storm and gave birth in a Buffalo fire station as she couldn't reach a hospital.
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"It is an extraordinary situation," the state's governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters on Wednesday. "It will get worse before it gets better."
The storm has broken records even in Buffalo, often hit by snow. "This is an historic event. When all is said and done, this snowstorm will break all sorts of records, and that's saying something in Buffalo," Cuomo said.
Forecasters say the temperatures are set to warm up at the weekend, risking turning the heavy snow into floods.