At least seven people have died after a massive early season snowstorm, described as one of the worst in living memory, struck parts of Michigan, upstate New York and New Hampshire.

The city of Buffalo was badly hit with up to 6ft of snow falling, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency.

Three people lost their lives from apparent heart attacks - two while shovelling snow and the other died while pushing a trapped car.

A man (46) was found dead in his vehicle, which was buried in snow in Alden, 24 miles east of Buffalo and another person died in a car accident.

Amid the heavy snowfall, some emergency vehicles including ambulances and fire trucks had to be abandoned, with patients taken to hospital by paramedics on snowmobile.

Schools were closed and driving bans were ordered following the blizzard. Snow blown by strong winds forced the closure of a 132-mile stretch of the Thruway, the main highway across New York state.

Another storm is expected on Thursday.

Erie county executive Mark Poloncarz said: "Some parts of our county are going to receive a year's worth of snowfall in three days."

However, the storm seemed strangely localised with 60in of snow reported at a site southeast of the town of Lancaster. But only a few miles to the northwest, just 10cm reportedly fell at Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

The freak storm left more than 150 people stranded in their vehicles, including the Niagra University women's basketball team, who were trapped for over 24 hours before being rescued.

Their three-and-a-half hour journey home turned into an ordeal after their bus got stuck.

Tiffany Corselli, a member of the team, said they ate granola bars and pretzels to keep going and had to drink melted snow after running out of water.

She said: "In the beginning we was all joyful but as the hours started going we got tired."

Head coach Kendra Faustin of Niagara University told radio station WKBW: "We've been sitting here so long that we're completely snowed in."

"There's four feet of snow around the bus. We're running low on water so we've been taking cups and putting snow in them and letting them melt."

Stunned onlookers in Buffalo captured images of a massive wall of snow sweeping across the city's Lake Erie.

The wall of snow phenomenon was created by what is known as the "lake effect".

That is when icy winds meet the warmer waters of a lake causing a snow cloud to explode out of the water vapour.

It hit on a day when much of the US was enduring icy weather. Temperatures on Tuesday fell to freezing or below in all 50 states.

These people say they have never seen anything like it.