Extreme snowfall “will produce near zero visibility, very difficult to impossible travel, damage to infrastructure, and may paralyze the hardest-hit communities,” the Weather Prediction Center said Saturday morning.

Drivers in western New York’s Erie County still advised to stay off the roads after deadly storm dumps almost 6 feet of snow in some areas

Snowfall totals of over 6 feet have been recorded in two locations, according to the National Weather Service. Orchard Park, where the NFL’s Buffalo Bills play, has picked up 77.0 inches in the last 48 hours, and Natural Bridge, just east of Watertown, has picked up 72.3 inches – historic numbers for the area.

As the snowfall intensified, two county residents died from cardiac complications related to shoveling and attempting to clear the grounds, said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

“We send our deepest sympathies and remind all that this snow is very heavy and dangerous,” Poloncarz said. “Please continue to avoid shoveling this very heavy, wet snow – and use caution and avoid overexertion if you must shovel today.”

Winter weather alerts are still in effect for over 6 million people across six Great Lakes states Saturday morning – Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.
While the snowbirds typically migrate south for the winter, the snow fanatics tend to flock to northern areas of the U.S. to get their winter weather fix. But do you know which cities receive the most snowfall each year?

Using the most recent 30-year climatological averages (1991-2020) from NOAA, we’ve compiled a list of the seven U.S. cities that have the highest average annual snowfall.

For this analysis, we only included cities with a population of at least 50,000 residents. This ruled out some smaller cities that would have otherwise made the list, including (in no particular order) Bozeman, Montana; Burlington, Vermont; Caribou, Maine; Lander, Wyoming; Marquette, Michigan; Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan; Traverse City, Michigan; and Watertown, New York.

The outright snowiest place in America is Crater Lake National Park in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, where an average winter brings 463.1 inches of snow.

7. Anchorage, Alaska: 77.9 inches

Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska, kicks off our list of the seven snowiest cities in America. This probably isn’t much of a surprise for a city so far north that has an average winter temperature of about 19 degrees.

6. Flagstaff, Arizona: 90.1 inches

Flagstaff – surrounded by desert, mountains and ponderosa pine forests – might not be a city you’d expect to find on this list. Sitting at 6,903 feet in elevation, Flagstaff is situated just south of the San Francisco Peaks, the tallest mountain range in Arizona.

5. Boulder, Colorado: 92.8 inches

Boulder is at the base of the Rocky Mountain foothills and sits at an elevation of 5,319 feet above sea level. It is the 12th-most-populous city in Colorado and is located some 25 miles northwest of Denver.

4. Buffalo, New York: 95.4 inches

Buffalo is the second-largest city in New York, behind only New York City at the opposite end of the state. It’s located at the eastern end of Lake Erie, placing it in a prime spot for lake-effect snow off this Great Lake. However, Buffalo does not typically receive as much snow as two other cities to its east, Rochester and Syracuse.

3. Rochester, New York: 102.0 inches

Rochester, some 70 miles east of Buffalo, receives more than 100 inches of snow in a typical winter. Much of it comes in the form of lake-effect snow off Lake Erie to its southwest and Lake Ontario to its north.

2. Erie, Pennsylvania: 104.3 inches

Erie is situated on the immediate shoreline of Lake Erie in northwestern Pennsylvania. Snow bands off this Great Lake vault its average seasonal snowfall to more than 100 inches.

1. Syracuse, New York: 127.8 inches

Syracuse takes home the crown as the snowiest city in America, averaging 127.8 inches each winter. That’s just shy of 11 feet of snow, most of which is courtesy of the large body of water to its northwest: Lake Ontario.