BUFFALO, N.Y. — The blizzard started impacting Western New York around 8:45 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 23, 2022.
Over the course of several days through the Christmas holiday, 47 people lost their lives.
"There were four people who died that were found in their vehicles," Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said. "There were 12 individuals who died in the City of Buffalo alone from lack of power, no oxygen, we couldn't get emergency response crews to them."
The 911 centers were clogged with calls from people who lost power, or were trapped in their car, or simply panicked at the sheer force of the storm.
At one point, the Buffalo airport recorded a 72-mph wind gust. Dozens of emergency responders were trapped on roads that couldn't be navigated. At one point during the storm, plow crews were pulled from the roads because visibility was at zero. It was impossible to safely navigate parts of the region.
The National Weather Service maintains that there was ample warning of the storm.
"It may have started a couple of hours early, but in general, it was it was very well forecast," said Richard Hamilton, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "Some might say surprisingly so, given the extreme nature of the event."
Hamilton said the weather service believed it would be a significant storm about seven days out, but he grew concerned about the public taking it seriously when he went to a grocery store a couple days before the storm hit.
"It looked like maybe a day in the in the summer there was no panic, not that you wanted people to to panic," Hamilton said. "But it just seemed like people weren't really taking the warning and the talk seriously."
Perhaps the public was still reeling from the Snowvember II storm that hit four weeks prior. Another possibility is that people couldn't prepare because payday for many workplaces was Dec. 22. As the storm hit on the morning of a payday in one of the poorest communities in the country, on a holiday weekend, it's more likely than not that some people didn't have a choice but to wait until Friday to get supplies for their family.
Language barriers are another reason why the death toll was so high during the storm.
"We do know that a few of the individuals who died during the Blizzard did not have English as their primary language, and may not have understood the severity of the storm," Poloncarz said.
Since the storm, the city of Buffalo and Erie County have worked to improve communication ahead of a storm. The county hired researchers in Albany to explore better ways to communicate before and during a storm.
Erie County Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Commissioner Dan Neaverth Jr. said the county will be more vigilant in using the iPAWS system, a mobile alert system often associated with tornado warnings or Amber alerts.
"The messages need to be very crisp, very clear. leaving very little if leaving no doubt that if you go outside, this is going to be detrimental to your health," Neaverth said.
The City of Buffalo hired an emergency manager and a fleet manager, and along with the county have made several equipment purchases to use during a severe weather event.
But whether or not these changes and plans will be effective won't be known until the next generational storm hits the region.