New York state braces for more snow

Tuesday's snowstorm left parts of upstate New York with as much as 5.5 feet of snow (1.68 meters) on the ground, making roads impassable and stranding some people in their homes.

A long stretch of the state's main motorway, the New York State Thruway, where hundreds of vehicles were trapped for hours, remained closed on Wednesday.

Among those stranded on snowy roads was the women's basketball team of Niagara University. The players are reported to have been stuck on a bus for 30 hours before finally being rescued.

In a separate incident, one woman is reported to have given birth in a fire station in Buffalo, after her husband failed in his bid to drive her to the hospital.

New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo said that by Wednesday afternoon, everybody who had been trapped in vehicles had been rescued. The governor responded to the storm by declaring a state of emergency in 10 counties and deploying National Guard troops to help in the rescue efforts.

"This is an historic event. When all is said and done, this snowstorm will break all sorts of records," Cuomo said.

A total of seven deaths have been attributed to the storm, including one man found in his car buried under several meters of snow and another who died in a car accident. Most of the other deaths were caused by heart attacks.

Cuomo warned that the state's troubles were far from over, as not only was another storm expected to dump as much as a meter of fresh snow on the region, but temperatures were expected to become milder with possible rain on the weekend. Cuomo said that this could lead to significant problems as the snow melts.

According to the Associated Press the total snowfall in the Buffalo area this week could climb to as much as 2.4 meters, approaching the yearly average.

pfd/tj (Reuters, AP, AFP)