- The Bills are due to play the Steelers at 4:30pm ET after it was moved 24 hours
- But Orchard Park is still covered in snow on a freezing cold Monday morning
- DailyMail.com provides all the latest international sports news
The Buffalo Bills have posted a picture of the ominous scene at a bitter-cold Orchard Park stadium just hours before they are due to play the Pittsburgh Steelers in the NFL playoffs.
The game, which was moved from Sunday to Monday because of wintery weather in Western New York, ran the risk of being moved again after one more day of snow in raised the possibility of another postponement.
On Sunday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she expected the game to kick off as scheduled, with the end of the storm allowing time for roads and the stadium to be cleared of snow.
A day earlier, Hochul and the NFL cited public safety concerns as the reason to push the game back to Monday.
The Bills are even paying fans $20 an hour – and laying on free hot beverages and breakfast – to go and clear the snow in a bid to get the game on.
The Buffalo Bills have posted a picture of the ominous scene at a bitter-cold Orchard Park
Logan Eschrich came to Buffalo to witness the snowstorm, and he actually hung around to shovel.
Once the professional storm chaser saw the Bills invite fans to help dig out a snow-filled Highmark Stadium for their delayed playoff game against the visiting Steelers, now scheduled for Monday, Eschrich couldn’t resist.
Sniffling and shivering from the cold, Eschrich detailed the seemingly impossible task he and the estimated 85-person shovel crew faced while being compensated $20 an hour. Winds whipped at 30 mph (48 kph), and snow was falling at a rate of 2 inches (5 centimeters) per hour at what was supposed to be the game’s 1pm EST kickoff, which has been pushed bac to Monday at 4:30pm.
‘It would have been absolutely impossible (to play). We could barely see the next row down from us. And unfortunately, it’s still that way,’ Eschrich told The Associated Press by phone in the mid-afternoon. ‘We made progress shoveling, but not much at all.’
A worker helps remove snow from Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park on Sunday
Fans, like this man, were invited to shovel the Bills’ stadium in Orchard Park for $20 an hour
Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park is no stranger to snow, but extra workers were still needed
He said bleacher seats were entirely buried by snow, adding that it was treacherous to travel the mere two blocks to the stadium from where he camped overnight.
‘I’m very happy they put the travel ban into effect,’ said Eschrich, who works for Live Storms Media, and made the 16-hour trip north from Alabama, where he had planned to get video of tornadoes. ‘Nobody should be out here.’
The Buffalo region, which includes the Bills’ home in Orchard Park, was mostly at a standstill, with a travel ban in place due to a dangerous lake-effect storm that began on Saturday and was expected to last through Sunday night.
The storm was projected to dump up between 1 and 3 feet of snow, with the heaviest accumulation around Orchard Park.
With the storm’s brunt expected to wane by Sunday night, the National Weather Service’s forecast for Monday called for a chance of snow showers in the morning and a high of 19 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-7 Celsius), but with strong wind making it feel like minus-5 (minus-21).
Bills players and staff spent Sunday at home. The Steelers arrived Sunday afternoon with travel restrictions having been lifted at Buffalo Niagara International Airport and northern parts of Erie County.
More to follow.
