Thirty-five hours and counting.

That’s how long dozens of drivers and their passengers have been stuck on the Thruway. At least 100 cars and trucks were stuck again overnight on the Interstate - more than 30 hours after blinding lake effect snow brought the traffic to a halt.

The morning sun rose on a crystal clear day, yet dispositions were anything but sunny. Several this morning said no one has come to check on them.

“I haven’t eaten for a day and a half,” said Samuel Martin, a 49-year-old trucker from Silverton, Ore. “This huge pile, this mess, was allowed to be here. They completely abandoned this highway once they decided to close it.”

He was on the eastbound Thruway, close to Exit 56 in Blasdell, and said no one had come to check on him. He was able to walk to the Wegmans on McKinley Parkway and buy some food to bring back to his truck. State Police did give envelopes and a note to a trucker to distribute to the other drivers. The note said authorities plan to evacuate the drivers.

“I think they should have been monitored through the night, throughout the whole entire time,” said his worried wife, Wendy, at home with their four children in Oregon. “He just feels abandoned out there.”

Martin called his wife around 1:30, and said he was able to drive his truck and 55-foot trailer out of the snow pack.

While some travelers, like the Niagara University women’s basketball team, were taken to safety, and vehicles are being freed one by one, others were not as fortunate near the Lackawanna Toll Barrier, where cars and trucks had been immobile since about 1 a.m. Tuesday.

There were more than two dozen motorists huddled at toll barrier office in Lackawanna, and authorities said motorists had been rescued from their vehicles.

Shawn Daley of Amherst and Steven Ratcliff of Cheektowaga were headed to work in separate vehicles early Tuesday morning, and didn’t know how dire the road had become.

Daley, 39, works at Mentholatum in Orchard Park, while Ratcliff, 40, was going to the Ford Stamping Plant in Woodlawn.

They both were stuck on the westbound Thruway just east of the Lackawanna Toll Barrier, about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Daley’s car was running out of gas, and then his battery gave out. He walked to a few cars, asking if they had room for another passenger. Ratcliff opened his door. After more than 28 hours together, they have become fast friends.

“I almost feel like he’s my best friend at this point. Letting me in his car, pretty much saved my life,” Daley said, adding that several other motorists declined to let him in before he asked Ratcliff.

“They got the eastbound open, they have plows down there,” Ratcliff said. “You see regular cars going down. We’re still buried on the westbound.”

The only contact with the outside world came from a snowmobiler who threw them a bottle of Cool Blue Gatorade, and asked if they had gas, they said. They are close to the eastbound lane, which has been plowed, they said.

“Twenty feet away, seems like our freedom to get out of here. There’s nothing in our way except anything from 4 to 6 feet of snow drifts,” Daley said. “We’ve called 911, we’ve listened to the radio.”

Then about 9:45 a.m., State Police came by and asked if they wanted to be rescued. They said yes, hopped the median, and were taken to the toll booth building.

A few hundred feet from them, Lisa and Paul Winter of Eden spent a second night in their Chevy Avalanche near the toll barrier. About 7 a.m., Paul Winter saw a car coming on the eastbound side of the road. He climbed over the median and flagged it down, and the driver took the couple to the toll barrier building.

“There are vending machines, and running water,” Lisa Winter said. “We are blessed, we leave it at that.”

They spent 30 hours in the pickup truck, and did have enough gas to keep it running. A snowmobiler tossed a couple bottles of water to them Tuesday night, but no one came to the truck to check on them.

“What a relief,” she said, after getting to the toll barrier. “You go stir crazy.”

By 10 a.m. Wednesday, they had made it back to their home in Eden.

The Niagara University women’s basketball team, which had been stuck on their bus on the Thruway thanks to the epic lake-effect storm, made it to the Lackawanna toll plaza just before 4:30 a.m., according to a Tweet from coach Kendra Faustin.

“Making our way to police station and then to campus,” Faustin continued in her Tweet.

The team played at the University of Pittsburgh on Monday night, but got stuck since early Tuesday morning because of the snow near the Lackawanna tolls on the I-90. The team’s situation made national news on ESPN.

Michael Pinkoske of Lakeview is one of the lucky ones. He was able to drive his pickup truck down the Thruway after being hauled out about 9:30 a.m. today. He had been on the westbound Thruway, just past the split with Route 219, for 30 hours, getting bogged down when he was coming home from work at the Tops Market warehouse in Lancaster Tuesday morning.

“All of a sudden it was just like a parking lot,” said his wife, Joanne, waiting for him at home. “Semi trucks and cars at a complete stand still.”

And Pinkoske sat. A few motorists came to sit in his car with him. One was a man with a heart condition, who lost battery power on his cell phone. He used Pinkoske’s phone to call his son, who was able to drive his truck, with a snowmobile, to the nearest exit. He came to get his father in the middle of the night, taking him away by snowmobile.

“Somebody can reach his father like that with a snowmobile, but no one in the county could get people out to help these people,” Joanne Pinkoske said.

Her husband woke up Wednesday morning, and noticed that the flatbed truck behind him had been pulled out during the night. Then about 9:15 a.m., the driver of the flatbed came back, and hauled him out. Pinkoske was headed east on the Thruway, away from home, but away from the 30-hour nightmare as well.

“I don’t know where he’s going to. I think he’s overwhelmed right now,” she said. “He’s still trying to figure it out.”

Aaron Besecker contributed to this story

email: bobrien@buffnews.com