In the pictures from Buffalo in the state of New York, people wade through masses of snow that reach them above their knees.

Whole houses are covered in icicles, cars are snowed in on deserted highways.

On the night of Christmas Eve, Buffalo Airport reported: visibility zero meters.

A severe winter storm swept across the Northeast of the United States over the Christmas weekend.

American media reported more than 30 deaths on Monday, 17 of them in Erie County, New York state alone.

Most deaths are said to have occurred in traffic accidents on snow-covered or mirror-smooth roads.

Sofia Dreisbach

North American political correspondent based in Washington.

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In a press conference on Christmas Day, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, "This storm will be remembered as the most devastating in Buffalo history." Has".

Hochul had previously declared a state of emergency.

The Great Lakes region of the northern United States is frequently hit by violent snowstorms;

however, the situation over the Christmas weekend was considered exceptionally dire.

More than a meter of snow fell in the region over the weekend.

The extreme cold front stretched from the Great Lakes in the north of the country to the Rio Grande on the Mexican border.

According to reports from the AP news agency, 60 percent of the American population have been affected by weather warnings for double-digit minus temperatures, freezing rain and snowstorms in the past few days.

Temperatures fell well below average in many places, according to the National Weather Service.

Video footage from Seattle, Northwest America, showed parked cars sliding down sloping streets on a layer of ice.

Until Saturday, the city strongly advised against going outside unnecessarily or even driving.

Emergency services rescued casualties by pushing them on a stretcher across the ice to the emergency vehicle, while sliding on their knees.

Across the country, more than 10,000 flights were canceled over the holiday weekend, when many Americans make long-distance trips to visit their families.

Many were stuck in their cars for hours when roads were no longer passable due to the storm.

Temperatures were also unusually low in Texas on the border with Mexico.

Many of the thousands of migrants currently waiting for a controversial deportation rule to be lifted camped out in sub-zero temperatures.

In the area of ​​the particularly hard-hit city of Buffalo, according to Governor Kathy Hochul, there were still people waiting for rescue on Sunday evening and sitting in houses without electricity or with burst pipes.

As of Sunday morning, there had been more than 500 rescue operations, but almost every available fire engine was stranded in the snow.

In the New England states in Northeast America, more than 270,000 people were temporarily without power, across America there were more than 1.6 million households on Saturday morning, according to the PowerOutage website.

Authorities in Erie County fear more deaths;

a curfew and a driving ban were still in effect on Monday.

The police asked residents to follow the instructions, saying it was "no joke".

Some drivers had stayed in their vehicles for more than 24 hours because it was impossible to get through the snowstorm.

On Monday and Tuesday, sub-zero temperatures were forecast for the Buffalo region.