Frigid temperatures are being felt across the state from the storm that brought high winds, snow, flooding, and blackouts.
Roads and a portion of the New York State thruway in Western New York remained closed Saturday.
The National Guard was deployed to assist residents in the Buffalo area. Several people were rescued after being stranded in their vehicles overnight.
Speaking Saturday morning after touring flooded streets in Far Rockaway, Queens, Governor Kathy Hochul urged New Yorkers to avoid travel and said she would be requesting a federal disaster declaration.
“This is a weekend where it is absolutely dangerous in some parts of our state, particularly the western part, to be out there. So we want to encourage people to stay where they are,” said Hochul. “In addition to having a statewide emergency declaration, I’ll be asking the federal government for a declaration of emergency that will allow us to seek reimbursements for the extraordinary expenses of all the overtime and the fact that we’ve brought in mutual aid from other parts of the state – we’ve deployed individuals, whether it the utility crews have come, but also making sure that we have the vehicles we need – but literally they cannot get through right now, no matter how many emergency vehicles we have. They just cannot get through the conditions as we speak.”