At least four people were killed in a 46-vehicle pileup, including numerous tractor-trailers, Friday afternoon on the Ohio Turnpike in western Erie County as a massive winter storm brought white-out conditions, frigid temperatures, and dangerous wind chills to northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.
An Ohio State Highway Patrol dispatcher said the main pileup occurred in the toll road’s eastbound lanes near Milepost 106.4 and was first reported about 12:34 p.m., the dispatcher said.
Sgt. Ryan Purpura, a regional highway patrol spokesman, said multiple people were injured along with the four known deaths in several crashes that included the pileup in Erie County’s Groton Township. Troopers from several patrol posts, turnpike personnel, and first responders from around the area were on scene, and buses were used “to take people from their vehicles to a local facility so they can stay warm,” the sergeant said.
“Multiple agencies from several counties are continuing rescue operations,” the sergeant Tweeted at 6:34 p.m. “White-out conditions persist. Travel is not recommended.”
“This is a stark reminder of what can happen when you get behind the wheel and try to drive in bad conditions,” Sgt. Purpura said in an update tweet at 10:30 p.m.
The crash’s death toll rose slowly from afternoon into evening, with the third fatality reported just after 8 p.m. and the fourth just after 9 p.m. as work crews continued to pick apart and then remove wrecked vehicles. The highway patrol said in the 9 p.m. update that 15 wrecked tractor-trailers still remained to be cleared.
The Toledo Fire and Rescue Department was among those that sent mutual-aid crews to help with the crash response.
Eastbound traffic was forced off the turnpike at the State Rt. 53 (Exit 91) near Fremont, while westbound traffic was forced off at U.S. 250 (Exit 118) in Erie County near Milan.
Snow accumulation throughout the day, which forecasters had predicted at between 1 and 4 inches in metro Toledo, stayed near the lower end of that range in most parts of the area, with accumulations only up to about 1½ inches in places like Napoleon as of Friday afternoon.
Lonnie Fisher, meteorologist with the Northern Indiana Branch of the National Weather Service that covers far northwest Ohio, said the true danger with this storm was never supposed to be the snow totals.
“In some areas it has been a little bit less than expected,” Mr. Fisher said Friday of the snow accumulation across northwest Ohio, noting that because of the wind blowing and drifting, snow reports have been sporadic and hard to measure.
“The focus of this storm over northwest Ohio has not been so much the snow amounts themselves, it was just that whatever snow we got was going to be blown around by these strong winds,” he said.
Blowing snow was widespread by Friday morning with a west wind reaching 28 to 31 mph and gusts as high as 55 mph that made it feel like anywhere from minus 20 degrees to nearly minus 40 degrees in some parts of the area.
Between 9 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. Friday, the temperature at Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport plunged from 42 degrees Fahrenheit to 2 below zero. After bottoming out at minus-3 at 10:48 a.m., the mercury there rebounded only to around 0 for the rest of the day.
Hazardous driving conditions on area roads prompted Level 2 snow emergencies to be declared in Lucas, Wood, and Paulding counties and Level 3 snow emergencies to be declared in Ottawa, Erie, Hancock, Sandusky, and Seneca counties, all of which are still in place as of Friday afternoon. Level 2 warns against nonessential travel, while Level 3 forbids drivers other than emergency responders and other legally authorized motorists from using roads.
Local businesses like Imagination Station, Balance Pan Asian Grille, and all Toledo Lucas County Public Libraries were closed Friday, as a result.
Eastern areas like Erie and Ottawa County also had the highest occurrence of power outages, but at about 6 p.m. a pair of larger outages blacked out nearly all of Waterville.
FirstEnergy, parent to Toledo Edison, posted to its outage website that more than 2,000 customers in Waterville had lost power for a cause still under investigation. City officials announced the opening of warming centers at the Waterville library, a local firehouse, and two locations in neighboring Whitehouse, while the utility set a 12:30 a.m. goal for restoring electric service.
According to FirstEnergy, more than 7,000 Erie County customers were without electricity early Friday afternoon, while just under 6,000 Ottawa County customers were blacked out. By nightfall, those outages had been reduced to about 1,700 in each county, while smaller numbers were still in the dark -- and likely without heat if their furnaces require electricity to operate -- in nearby counties.
The major Ohio Turnpike pileup was just a few miles east of a similar crash March 12, 2014, involving more than 80 vehicles that killed three travelers and seriously injured a state trooper who stopped to render aid. Investigators blamed unsafe speeds in the dangerous weather conditions as a major factor in that pileup.
The turnpike had already issued a travel ban expiring early Sunday on several kinds of large vehicles, including “high profile” vehicles measuring taller than 7 feet, 6 inches, and warned that motorists in the highly affected areas of Erie and Sandusky counties should expect delays and that the going might be slow.
Nationwide, more than 200 million people were under a weather advisory or warning on Friday, the National Weather Service said. The weather service's map “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever,” forecasters said.
Other traffic deaths blamed on the weather Friday included one in Kansas City, Mo., and three in northern Kansas, while a pileup on a Michigan freeway involved at least nine tractor-trailers. Strong easterly winds ahead of the storm center, meanwhile, caused shoreline flooding in New York, Hoboken, N.J., and Boston.
Power outages left about 1.4 million homes and businesses in the dark, according to the website PowerOutage, which tracks utility reports. Utilities in Nashville, Memphis, and throughout the Tennessee Valley said they were implementing rolling blackouts Friday to conserve power as the region battles an extreme cold front.
And more than 4,600 flights within, into, or out of the United States were canceled Friday, according to the tracking site FlightAware, causing more mayhem as travelers try to make it home for the holidays, while Amtrak had canceled many trains in the Midwest including all service through Ohio.
The Ohio Department of Transportation said Friday evening it had 190 crews working in the state’s 16 northwestern-most counties and expected them to continue working in shifts around-the-clock through Christmas Eve and “likely” on Christmas. While truck operators were plowing, salt or other treatments were skipped because of the deep cold and high wind making that ineffective.
Plows were involved in four collisions Friday, including one on I-75 near North Baltimore in southern Wood County.
“ODOT crews are working hard, but visibility [impairment] from the blowing snow is the issue, especially in flat, open areas,” said Mark Bressler, the highway management administrator at ODOT’s Bowling Green district office. “Stay home to stay safe.”
The weather service’s Mr. Fisher said drivers should continue to be careful on area roads throughout the Christmas weekend.
“Christmas Eve we will have the chance to get above zero,” Mr. Fisher said, “probably with a high temperature around 10 degrees give or take. As we get into Sunday, Christmas Day will be more in the teens.”
Mr. Fisher said winds in the area would start to diminish Friday night but remain brisk through Christmas Eve.
“We are still looking at 30 to 35 mph wind gusts in areas well through overnight tonight and into Saturday,” Mr. Fisher said. “The winds do not really start to die off until you get into maybe late Saturday night into Sunday, but the biggest drop off will happen Sunday into Monday.”
Roads will remain snow-covered and slippery Saturday and Sunday, he said, since single-digit or below-zero temperatures render rock salt ineffective at melting snow or ice.
“To have any appreciable improvement on the roads, you are probably looking until maybe we get to Tuesday, when we will get temperatures in the mid and upper 20s and the salt will start to do a little more,” Mr. Fisher said.
The strong westerly wind pushed so much water across Lake Erie on Friday morning that the water level at Toledo reached a record low of just over seven feet below low-water datum, the National Weather Service in Cleveland reported, while lakefront flooding occurred in the Buffalo area.
The weather service said the safe water level for navigating large vessels is 6 inches above low-water datum, and Lake Erie’s west end was likely to remain below that stage until midday Sunday.
Staff writer David Patch and Blade News Services contributed to this report.
First Published December 23, 2022, 9:59 p.m.
