Giant chunks of ice spilled over the banks of the Niagara River across from Buffalo on Sunday, creating a jagged, frosty barrier between the river and a scenic road.
Dramatic footage captured by park police in Ontario showed the massive chunks roiling onto shore. High winds had raised water levels on the eastern end of Lake Erie in a phenomenon known as a seiche and then, according to the New York Power Authority, driven ice over a boom upstream from the river.
Ice mounds 25 to 30 feet high also came ashore farther south, piling up on several lakefront properties in suburban Hamburg.
A similar phenomenon could be seen in Oswego, New York, some 40 miles north of Syracuse.
Toppled trees and power poles, easy targets for strong winds that uprooted them from ground saturated by rain and snowmelt, plunged homes and businesses into darkness, though in most places power was expected to be back quickly as winds died down by the end of Monday.
Hundreds of schools were delayed or canceled in New York.
