Snowfall intensifies in Northeast U.S., with many stuck at home under blizzard warnings and travel bans

Mil­lions of peo­ple in New York City and a large swath of the north­east­ern U.S. were stuck at home un­der road trav­el bans and bliz­zard warn­ings Mon­day as heavy snow and strong winds in­ten­si­fied, cre­at­ing white­out con­di­tions in the dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed re­gion.

Snow fell at a rate of 2 to 3 inch­es (5 to 7.6 cen­time­tres) an hour ear­ly Mon­day from New York through Mass­a­chu­setts. Some ar­eas have got­ten well over a foot (30 cen­time­tres) of snow since Sun­day, along with wind gusts of over 30 mph (48 kph) and low vis­i­bil­i­ty.

In New York, Long Is­land MacArthur Air­port re­port­ed 22.5 inch­es (57 cen­time­tres) of snow as of Mon­day morn­ing. About 18 inch­es (46 cen­time­tres) was re­port­ed in Newark, New Jer­sey, and about 15 inch­es (38 cen­time­tres) fell in New York City’s Cen­tral Park. New Lon­don, Con­necti­cut, and North Kingstown, Rhode Is­land, both got 17 inch­es of snow (43 cen­time­tres).

The Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice called trav­el con­di­tions “near­ly im­pos­si­ble.”

Bliz­zard warn­ings stretched from Mary­land to Maine. Cell phones across New York City re­ceived wail­ing push alerts Sun­day night an­nounc­ing a ban on non-emer­gency trav­el on all streets through noon Mon­day be­cause of “dan­ger­ous bliz­zard con­di­tions.” Rhode Is­land and New Jer­sey im­ple­ment­ed sim­i­lar re­stric­tions.

More than 5,000 flights in and out of the Unit­ed States were can­celled for Mon­day, ac­cord­ing to the flight track­ing web­site FlightAware. Most were can­celled in New York, New Jer­sey and Boston. Rhode Is­land’s T.F. Green In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port an­nounced Mon­day that it was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ing all air­port op­er­a­tions.

Pub­lic tran­sit was sus­pend­ed in some ar­eas. Even Do­or­Dash an­nounced it was sus­pend­ing de­liv­er­ies in New York City overnight.

The storm caused pow­er out­ages that left more than 500,000 cus­tomers in the dark along the East Coast ear­ly Mon­day, in­clud­ing over 212,000 cus­tomers in Mass­a­chu­setts and 128,000 cus­tomers in New Jer­sey, ac­cord­ing to Power­Outage.us, which tracks out­ages na­tion­wide.

About 10,000 cus­tomers were with­out pow­er Mon­day morn­ing on sub­ur­ban Long Is­land. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said util­i­ty crews will re­store pow­er as soon as pos­si­ble, but winds of 50 mph (kph 80) or high­er could de­lay ac­tion.

“The line men and women are not go­ing up there to re­store pow­er if they have to go up on a pow­er line. So … peo­ple have to un­der­stand that we will do it as soon as it’s safe to have that oc­cur,” Hochul told PIX11 in New York.

The storm dropped fresh snow across the re­gion as ac­cu­mu­la­tions from an ear­li­er storm had just melt­ed away — ex­cept for gray moun­tain­ous piles in cer­tain places. Peo­ple be­gan dig­ging out even as snow­fall con­tin­ued Mon­day morn­ing.

Trae Sto­ry, 31, was do­ing some shov­el­ling for a neigh­bour in Brook­lyn.

“I’m from Min­neso­ta, so this is like, nor­mal,” he said, adding “I might’ve bro­ken a sweat. It’s like my warm-up for the day.”

Matthew Wo­jtkowiak, 57, an at­tor­ney, was al­so shov­el­ling in his Brook­lyn neigh­bour­hood.

“I’m from the Mid­west, so this is in the zone,” he said. “Not too bad, not too easy, ei­ther.”

Schools were closed, and he said he hoped peo­ple would get out and en­joy the snow.

“We have sleds at the ready,” he said.

Emer­gen­cies were de­clared in New York, Philadel­phia and oth­er cities, as well as sev­er­al states stretch­ing from Delaware to Mass­a­chu­setts as of­fi­cials mo­bi­lized readi­ness ef­forts.

“The com­bi­na­tion of heavy snow­fall and strong winds will con­tin­ue to pro­duce bliz­zard con­di­tions along the North­east­ern Seaboard,” the weath­er ser­vice said Mon­day. “Sharply re­duced vis­i­bil­i­ty will make trav­el ex­treme­ly treach­er­ous across these ar­eas.”

The weath­er ser­vice re­ferred to the storm as a “clas­sic bomb cy­clone/nor’east­er off the North­east coast.” A bomb cy­clone is when a storm drops at least 24 mil­libars in pres­sure in 24 hours.

Heav­i­est snow is falling and wind pick­ing up

Mil­lions of peo­ple in New York City and a large swath of the north­east­ern U.S. were stuck at home un­der road trav­el bans and bliz­zard warn­ings on Mon­day as a fierce win­ter storm bar­reled in­to the dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed re­gion with heavy snow­fall and high winds.

The weath­er ser­vice said the snow was ex­pect­ed to ta­per off by Mon­day af­ter­noon.

New York City and Boston can­celled pub­lic school class­es for Mon­day, while Philadel­phia will switch to on­line learn­ing. New York May­or Zohran Mam­dani called it the “first old-school snow day since 2019.”

“And to kids across New York City, you have a very se­ri­ous mis­sion if you choose to ac­cept it: Stay cozy,” he said.

Mean­while, out­reach work­ers worked to coax home­less New York­ers off the street and in­to shel­ters and warm­ing cen­tres.

Var­i­ous land­marks and cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions an­nounced clo­sures Mon­day, from New York’s Mu­se­um of Mod­ern Art to Ar­ling­ton Na­tion­al Ceme­tery in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Broad­way shows were can­celled Sun­day evening.

The weath­er ser­vice said the storm’s strong wind gusts could cause white­out con­di­tions and warned of a “Po­ten­tial­ly His­toric/De­struc­tive Storm” south­east of the Boston-Prov­i­dence cor­ri­dor.

“Winds like that, com­bined with heavy, wet snow, are a recipe for dam­aged trees and pro­longed pow­er out­ages,” said Bryce Williams, a me­te­o­rol­o­gist with the weath­er ser­vice’s Boston of­fice. “That’s what we’re most con­cerned with, is the com­bi­na­tion of those ex­treme snow amounts with that wind.”

Shov­el­ers re­cruit­ed for ma­jor snow clear­ing

In ad­di­tion to their ro­bust plough op­er­a­tions, New York City of­fi­cials re­cruit­ed peo­ple to shov­el snow, with some be­gin­ning work Sun­day night to get an ear­ly start on the first wave of snow­fall, Mam­dani said.

John Berlingieri scrapped plans for a fam­i­ly trip to Puer­to Ri­co. In­stead, he was prepar­ing his com­pa­ny, Berring­ton Snow Man­age­ment, for what could well be a mam­moth task: Clear­ing snow from mil­lions of square feet (me­ters) of as­phalt sur­round­ing shop­ping malls and in­dus­tri­al parks across Long Is­land.

Em­ploy­ees spent the last few days recharg­ing bat­ter­ies on the com­pa­ny’s 40 front-end load­ers and re­plac­ing wind­shield wipers on snow-re­moval ve­hi­cles.

“I’m an­tic­i­pat­ing at least one week of work around the clock,” Berlingieri said. “We’re go­ing to work 24 to 36 hours straight, sleep for a few hours and then go back.” —NEW YORK (AP)

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Sto­ry by AN­THO­NY IZA­GUIRRE, CLAIRE RUSH, JULIE WALK­ER and ADAM GELLER

An­tho­ny Iza­guirre re­port­ed from Al­bany, New York, and Claire Rush re­port­ed from Port­land, Ore­gon. Con­tribut­ing were As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Mark Kennedy in New York; Dar­lene Su­perville in Wash­ing­ton; and Christo­pher We­ber in Los An­ge­les.