snow the night before the blizzard (Thursday, January 27). In addition, many major roads in the city were completely cleared Wednesday, including South Park Avenue, Delaware and Tupper. Thursday morning, February 3, Mayor Makowski lifted the travel ban without consulting state or federal officials, and many people drove into Buffalo. They found the parking lots were not cleared, so left their cars in the roads. This turned many four-lane roads into two-lane roads. The NWS had forecast snow for Thursday, and the new snow arrived accompanied by winds, resulting in near-zero visibility and some areas claiming worse conditions than the previous Friday when the blizzard initially struck. A state of emergency continued or was declared in additional areas, including Alden, Brant, Evans, Lancaster, Newstead, North Collins, Wales, and West Seneca. Many roads in southern Erie County, as well as Niagara, Chautauqua, and Wyoming counties, were drifted shut. At midnight Thursday, Buffalo's driving ban was put back in place. Under pressure from many levels of elected government officials to declare blizzard-affected regions major disaster areas, President Carter sent his son, James Earl (Chip) Carter, and special presidential advisor, Margaret Costanza, to survey the situation on Friday, February 4; the visit included traveling to Buffalo, Lancaster and Cheektowaga. On Saturday, President Carter declared the counties of Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, Genesee, Niagara, Orleans and Wyoming in western New York, and the counties of Jefferson and Lewis in northern New York, a major disaster area; this is the first time a snowstorm was declared a federal disaster area. The previous emergency declaration had resulted in the federal government only assisting in snow removal, whereas the major disaster declaration caused the federal government assistance to be "expanded to include everything to protect life and property and to provide whatever materials and equipment that were required to relieve the emergency and restore the area to normalcy". The declaration also allowed the local governments to deal directly with private contractors and be reimbursed by the federal government instead of the USACE employing private contractors. On Friday morning, February 4, the NWS had forecast that early Saturday a storm would hit with about ) of new snow accompanied by strong winds, but the storm did not strike Buffalo. That weekend the Winter Carnival in Buffalo was postponed for the third time due to the too-wintry weather. On Monday, February 7, the driving ban that had been in place