Travel Ban Lifted for North Towns in Erie County

The Buffalo community has once again been crippled by a lake effect snowstorm. This one being harsh due to the powerful winds, which has caused intense whiteout conditions and heavy snowfall across the region.

The hardest hit areas include South Buffalo, West Seneca, Hamburg, Orchard Park, East Aurora, Angola, etc. However, the intense snow band has only spent a period of time areas north of Buffalo (mainly overnight and into the very early morning hours).

Because of that and the lesser snowfall totals, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the north towns travel ban is being lifted.

That includes Grand Island, Amherst, Clarence, Tonawanda and Newstead. Travel advisories are still in place.

However, the travel ban is still in effect for the City of Buffalo and the south towns, which includes Orchard Park, which is where the Bills playoff game will be played on Monday afternoon at 4:30 pm.

Hochul says that the conditions, while not perfect, will not involve life-threatening conditions on Monday afternoon like Sunday and Saturday. It will be very cold, breezy but no heavy snow and overly strong winds.

Here’s where travel bans are still in place.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz says the game will be held as scheduled but that not all the stadium lots will be cleared of snow in time. He highly encourages carpooling, as there will be less parking spaces available than usual.

This is all good news. However, the snow band is still pummeling the south towns and the event is not over yet. Hopefully, the ban for the south towns will be lifted tonight or very early on Monday morning, but Poloncarz wasn’t optimistic it would come tonight.