Snow Cripples Parts of Midwest and East : Storms: Schools closed, power cut to thousands. High winds, heavy rain and river flooding add to woes in other areas.

Cold Canadian air blowing over the Great Lakes triggered snow showers in the upper Midwest on Friday. Winds, rain and snow caused flooding and power outages in New York state and parts of the Midwest.

Heavy rain also caused flooding along the White River in Indiana, and homes in one Indianapolis neighborhood were surrounded by floodwaters, officials said.

A snow storm roared through Buffalo, N.Y., on the heels of 75-m.p.h. winds that overturned trucks, closed schools and cut power to thousands of people.

A 33-year-old man was found dead in his neighbor’s yard, apparently after he fell asleep in the cold while intoxicated, police Capt. Edward Ashcroft said.

Two pandas escaped from the Buffalo Zoo after winds toppled a tree that crashed into their habitat. Both were later captured, a zoo official said.

The cold front produced the heaviest November winds in Buffalo since 1960, the National Weather Service reported. Warnings of gale force winds were issued for the north Atlantic Coast.

Strong winds also were recorded in Michigan, where 50-m.p.h. gusts early Friday flipped the rear trailer of a truck on the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge that connects Upper and Lower Michigan.

Two inches of snow fell in Alpena and Sault Ste. Marie, both in Michigan.

In Chicago, a surprise snowstorm swept through parts of the city before dawn, laying a veneer of ice on freeway ramps and bridges that stalled thousands of commuters.

The amount of snow was less than an inch, and the storm itself covered an area only 30 miles wide, officials said. But the storm hit at a time when road surfaces were above freezing and the air temperature below freezing, causing a coat of ice to form on bridges, elevated highways and freeway ramps.

The area hardest hit was south and west of downtown Chicago. One woman commuting from a southwest suburb said it took her three hours to get to work.

Other parts of the city received little or no snow.

Elsewhere, strong winds and rain were blamed for two deaths in Kentucky. An 84-year-old Lexington man was killed when a large tree branch struck him, and another man died when a tree toppled onto his car.

In Ohio, a motorist was killed when 70-m.p.h. winds snapped off a tree limb that smashed through his windshield. Another Ohio man was electrocuted while pumping water from his basement after a storm that dumped as much as two inches of rain in some areas.

Temperatures around the nation ranged from 22 degrees at Devils Lake, N.D., to 86 degrees at Miami. The low temperature for the Lower 48 states Friday was 2 degrees above zero at Alamosa, Colo.