With heavy snowfall on Saturday and more on the way, the Buffalo Bills put a callout to volunteers to help get Highmark Stadium ready ahead of Sunday night’s game against the San Francisco 49ers.

Videos and photos shared on social media showed blizzard-like conditions as plows pushed snow off the field and volunteers cleared it from stadium seats and stairs. Snow is expected throughout the night in the city, and the state of New York.

As snow piled up, the wintery weather expanded across the Northern Plains and the Midwest, bringing the coldest temperatures since last February.

From North Dakota to West Virginia, temperatures were expected to fall 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit below average, as cold air swept over the Great Lakes.

The weather marks the season’s first lake-effect snowfall.

Common in the winter in this region of the US and Canada, lake-effect snow occurs when very cold air moves across the relatively warm water of the lakes.

These types of storms can cause large – though fairly localised – amounts of snowfall.

As much as 6ft of snow was forecast to fall in some areas by Tuesday morning.

“Heavy lake-effect snow bands and snow showers have developed downwind of the Great Lakes, and will continue into next week,” the NWS said. “Travel could be very difficult to impossible in spots.”