Pittsburgh and Allegheny County declared states of emergency on Monday, allowing for additional resources to support the cleanup from the massive snowstorm that walloped Western Pennsylvania with a daily record snowfall and left roads impassable throughout the region.

The declaration allows the city and county — and dozens of municipalities around the region that also declared emergencies — to bring in more help, including additional contractors who can haul out snow.

In Pittsburgh, the emergency declaration also will help with the city's increasingly depleted fleet, which suffered more blows to equipment during the storm.

Mayor Corey O'Connor said 37 trucks went down overnight Sunday into Monday. He had said the city's fleet was down 40 trucks heading into the storm.

"Safety's a priority," he said. "We're not taking any chances.

"We know we have a lot of work ahead of us."

From 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, about 50 trucks were on city roads, Mr. O'Connor said a news conference. The disaster declaration means that residents will see private contractors on the streets.

"We would hit a street and go back on that route an hour later, it'd be covered in snow again," he said. "Streets haven't been touched, and we're getting to them, but we just ask everybody to be patient."

The city expected 35 vehicles would be out removing snow overnight Monday into Tuesday, and 50 additional vehicles from contractors, O'Connor said Monday.

"We're now hitting a lot of secondary roads," he said.

The city said the vehicles that went down Sunday night were operating for over 36 hours across shifts, so there was general wear and tear, power takeoff issues, blade replacements and other issues that needed to be addressed.

The garage had been open around the clock since 6 a.m. Saturday, working through repairs and service.

The older public works vehicles raise safety concerns whenever there is significant snowfall in Pittsburgh, especially with a magnitude like the storm the city experienced this weekend.

The city requires about 123 snow-clearing vehicles to meet "full and adequate response times," according to a November 2025 report from city Controller Rachael Heisler.

There were 75 trucks with both plows and salt spreaders, and another 19 equipped with either a plow or salt spreader ahead of the storm.

"We simply do not have enough vehicles," Ms. Heisler told the Post-Gazette Monday. "The vehicles we do have are old, and they're getting older by the day."

Many of the trucks have accumulated more than 75,000 miles and exceeded their life cycles, Ms. Heisler said. The salt carried in the trucks can also be corrosive.

The operational problems that force a truck out of service can range from damaged windshield wiper blades to salt spreaders breaking off.

It can take anywhere from 45 minutes to several hours to fix some problems. Others can take months.

When the trucks are down, officials have been forced to turn to other city vehicles with snowplowing equipment to fill the gap.

"When we retrofit trucks with equipment they're not built for, we can negatively impact their lifespan even further," Ms. Heisler said.

Emergency declarations

Across Allegheny County, 25 disaster declarations covering 28 municipalities around Allegheny County were declared, officials said during a briefing Monday. Nearly a dozen Butler County towns also declared emergencies, said Steve Bicehouse, director of Butler County Emergency Services.

Parts of Butler County received some of the highest snowfall totals in the region.

Some towns in the central and northern reaches of the county received 16 or more inches, according to National Weather Service data.

Several of the towns and municipalities across Allegheny County told the Post-Gazette that they issued declarations because of limited resources available to them.

"A lot of them may (have) strains on their salt and or their plowing capabilities," said Matt Brown, chief of Allegheny County Emergency Services. "A lot of this equipment's been working 24, 36 hours straight now."

Local officials said the forecast gave them the ability to prepare and allocate resources ahead of time, making it clear that their small public works departments would not be enough.

"It's about making sure we can meet the needs of our residents, especially during a major storm like this when conditions can change fast and local capacity may not be enough on its own," Amanda Loutitt, borough manager for Homestead, told the Post-Gazette in an email.

The following municipalities in Allegheny County had declared states of emergency: Brackenridge, Braddock, Braddock Hills, Brentwood, Castle Shannon, Clairton, Dormont, Etna, Harrison, Heidelberg, Homestead, Jefferson Hills, Lincoln, McKeesport, Mt. Lebanon, North Braddock, Penn Hills, Pitcairn, Reserve, Scott, Shaler, Tarentum, Turtle Creek and Allegheny Valley, which includes Cheswick, Harmar, Springdale Borough, Springdale Township.

In Butler County, Adams, Butler City, Clearfield, Connoquenessing Township, East Butler, Forward, Harrisville, Lancaster, Marion, Mars and Saxonburg all declared emergencies.

Public safety response

Residents largely heeded warnings to limit travel on Sunday, which helped first responders navigate the roads, Pittsburgh Public Safety spokeswoman Cara Cruz said.

And Kasey Reigner, Allegheny County Department of Emergency Services spokeswoman, said 911 operations were normal and even below normal standards for a Sunday. Jim Madalinsky, public information officer for Allegheny County police, said there have been no significant incidents to report.

In Pittsburgh, emergency medical technicians answered over 266 emergency calls over 36 hours, EMS Chief Amera Gilchrist said in an update Monday afternoon.

The Bureau of EMS has added an additional ambulance and utility vehicle, she said.

Officials are asking that people remain off the roads as much as possible to allow the snow to continue to be removed from the streets.

Pittsburgh Public Schools were closed on Monday for the last traditional snow day this academic year, and district buildings will remain closed Tuesday on what will be a remote learning day. A full list of closures can be found on Post-Gazette news partner KDKA-TV's website.

Gov. Josh Shapiro on Monday gave a slap on the back to PennDOT and other state agencies that helped prepare for and deal with the major storm. The team, he said, did "a great job getting us prepared," and PennDOT's work on the storm was "extraordinary."

He also thanked the public for heeding advice to stay off the roads as PennDOT did its work.

Every county in the state was hit by the storm, Shapiro said.

There was some concern ahead of the storm that power outages would be a major issue. Around midday Monday, Shapiro said, only about 600 homes across the state remained without power.

PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll called the handling of the storm a "total success" from Erie to Philadelphia.

The storm also prompted cancellation of four scheduled voting session days in Harrisburg — two by the House and two by the Senate.

Lawmakers from both chambers — many of whom have to drive two to four hours to reach the Capitol — originally were scheduled to be in Harrisburg Monday through Wednesday for the first set of voting sessions of the calendar year. Days before the storm's arrival, the House canceled the Monday and Tuesday lawmaking days, but left Wednesday on its schedule.

The Senate followed suit and took Monday and Tuesday off its calendar. As of midday Monday, both chambers continued to have Wednesday listed as a voting session day, although a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman said "discussions regarding session on Wednesday are ongoing."

Airport and public transit impacts

Pittsburgh Regional Transit buses, which were operating where road conditions allow, were running about 30 to 40 minutes behind schedule, PRT spokesman Eddie Phillipps said in an email. Detours are possible if drivers cannot access certain streets safely.

Light rail service was running as normal.

At Pittsburgh International Airport, more than 80 flights had been canceled by late Monday afternoon, and more than 70 were delayed, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

More than 5,000 flights had been canceled nationwide Monday after more than 11,000 were canceled Sunday — the most since the COVID-19 pandemic.

None of Tuesday's flights had been canceled as of Monday morning, airport spokesman Bob Kerlik said.

"It looks like the national airspace is starting to get back to normal, somewhat, and we expect to see that smooth out in the next couple of days," he said.

The airport was able to maintain three of its four runways through the weekend storm, Kerlik said, besting some larger airports like LaGuardia in New York, which had to shut down.

"Our crews worked around the clock," Mr. Kerlik said. "(They were) really well prepared — some of the best snow crews in the country."

Extreme cold warning

The snow isn't the only concern moving forward this week. The extreme cold is here to stay, meteorologists say.

The total accumulation Sunday reached 11.2 inches at the National Weather Service's official climate site in Moon — just two-tenths of an inch shy of tying the largest snowfall this century in a single day, according to the NWS. The record was set on Feb. 5, 2010, as part of the infamous "Snowmageddon" storm.

Still, Jeff Craven, meteorologist in charge at the NWS Pittsburgh office, said Sunday's storm broke the old Jan. 25 snowfall record of 5.2 inches set in 2014 and tied for the 13th heaviest snow in Pittsburgh history over a 24-hour period.

The heaviest snow band was just north of Pittsburgh and hung over New Philadelphia, Ohio, across Beaver and Butler and into Armstrong and Jefferson counties, Mr. Craven said.

Some areas impacted by the band had snow totals over 20 inches, he said, and large swaths got 12 to 18 inches. The highest snowfall total recorded so far was 23 inches near New Bethlehem in Clarion County, he said.

Mr. Craven said to expect the extreme cold to linger for the rest of the month and into February following the storm.

An extreme cold warning was issued for Monday night into Tuesday morning as wind chills are expected to be as low as minus-25 degrees in some areas in the region. Light snow showers will continue on Monday with minor additional accumulations, according to the NWS forecaster's discussion.

The cold air mass will challenge some local records for daily cold temperatures, according to the discussion.

Temperatures will be below 20 degrees all week, Mr. Craven said, with lows around or below zero at night.

The tail end of the week will be the coldest, reaching minus-6 degrees Thursday night, with highs Friday struggling to reach double digits.

At this point, Mr. Craven said, there isn't much of a chance that temperatures will reach 32 degrees until the first week or two of February.

"We could always sneak in a day or two somewhere, but it looks solidly cold," he said. "I do not see us having bare ground again through at least the middle of February."

Once the weather eventually warms up a bit, Mr. Craven said there will be potential for ice jam flooding.

Ice jams occur when chunks of ice clump together, blocking the flow of a river, according to the NWS.

"They usually occur when the ice starts moving, and it starts to warm up," he said, which he doesn't anticipate until late February or March.

Light dustings of snow will continue throughout the week, he said, but the area is otherwise in the clear of heavy precipitation for the near future.

_____

Staff writers Adam Babetski and Ford Turner contributed.

_____

© 2026 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Visit www.post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.