"Unusually strong." "Record-breaking." That's what we're hearing, over and over again. Why, it's almost as if our weather patterns suddenly intensified for some reason:

BUFFALO, N.Y. Lake-effect snow pummeled areas around Buffalo for a second straight day, leaving residents stuck in their homes as officials tried to clear massive snow mounds with another storm looming.

Even hardened Buffalo residents were caught off-guard as more than 5 feet fell in parts of the city by Wednesday morning. Some areas were expected to get 6 feet by the storm's end Wednesday afternoon. A second storm was due Wednesday night.

I was on Nicole Sandler's show this morning, and she said we shouldn't be calling it climate change, it's more accurately "climate chaos." Because everything is now so unpredictable.

The snow was still falling Wednesday with more than 5 feet already on the ground, and some areas south of the city are expected to get a year's worth of snow — almost 6 feet — in just three days.

The national snowfall record for a 24-hour period is 76 inches, set in Silver Lake, Colo., in 1921. Some Buffalo suburbs approached that amount Tuesday, possibly the highest 24-hour snow in a populated area, the National Weather Service reported.

Meanwhile, temperatures in all 50 states fell to freezing or below overnight. The cold spread across most of the eastern half of the U.S. on Wednesday morning; record cold was reported in New York City, Washington, D.C., and as far south as Jacksonville, Fla.