Storm breaks snowfall records and shuts down airports, stranding thousands of travellers on the last weekend before Christmas .
A slow-moving storm that blanketed swaths of the U.S. mid-Atlantic with nearly two feet of snow reached southern New England on Sunday, continuing its assault on the East Coast after causing at least five deaths, crippling travel and leaving empty stores normally crammed with holiday shoppers.
Blizzard warnings were in effect for parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts with gusts up to nearly 100 kph. As much as 40 cm of snow was expected to cover parts of southern New England.
On the cusp of the winter solstice, the storm dropped 40 cm of snow on Reagan National Airport outside Washington on Saturday — the most ever recorded there for a single December day — and gave southern New Jersey its highest single-storm snowfall totals in nearly four years. Some of the deepest was recorded in the Philadelphia suburb of Medford, N.J., at 60 inches.
Airports in the Northeast were also jammed up. Most flights were cancelled at several, including Reagan National and Dulles in the Washington area; Philadelphia International; New York’s three major airports and Logan Airport in Boston.
By Sunday morning, one runway at Dulles International Airport was open, handling arriving flights, airport spokeswoman Tara Hamilton. At Reagan National, crews were still “moving the huge quantities of snow” dumped on the area, and Hamilton said the airport should be opening for business by midmorning.
Philadelphia Airport spokeswoman Phyllis VanIstendal said that with continuing bad weather and planes out of place, problems would continue Sunday.
Atlantic Canada will feel some of the effects today of the storm, although forecasters predict the storm will weaken by the time it reaches the Maritimes.
In southwestern Nova Scotia, Digby, Yarmouth, and Shelburne counties are expecting up to 25-centimetres of snow, while Halifax and Lunenberg County could get up to 10-centimetres.
Around New York City, the brunt of the storm hit Long Island, with blizzard conditions present and nearly 63 cm recorded in Upton. Crews clearing roads early Sunday reported whiteout conditions, said Lieutenant Robert P. Iberger of the Southampton police.
Nearly 28 cm of snow had fallen on New York City by Sunday morning, and the storm could be the worst the city has seen since about 66 cm fell in Central Park in February 2006, National Weather Service meteorologist Patrick Maloit said.
With strong wind gusts to keep the powdery snow swirling, the storm was so bad on Saturday that attractions such as the Smithsonian museums in Washington and the Philadelphia Zoo were closed. The National Mall, normally swarming with tourists, instead was the scene of snowball fights.
Not all shoppers were deterred by the snow.
“It really helped me get in the Christmas spirit,” said the Kathryn Mariani, who took a train to downtown Philadelphia from her home in the Germantown neighborhood.
In West Virginia, blankets were given to hundreds of drivers, and some motorists were stranded for up to 27 hours on highways, Red Cross spokesman Jeff Morris said.
The storm hit on the last weekend before Christmas, a time when roads are traditionally mad with holiday shoppers. But around shopping centers in Philadelphia’s New Jersey suburbs on Saturday, traffic was sparse and slow.
One person in Virginia was killed in a traffic accident caused by slick roads, and authorities said the weather may have contributed to another traffic death there. A third death in Virginia is believed to have been caused by exposure. In Ohio, two people were killed in accidents on snow-covered roads hit by the same storm system.
In New Jersey, a bus got stuck on snow-covered railroad tracks in Pennsauken and was hit by a train. The 26 passengers were evacuated from the bus 10 minutes before the crash, and the only reported injury was a minor one suffered by the train’s engineer, NJ Transit spokesman Dan Stessel said.
