First snow, now bitter cold disrupts life in eastern U.S.
Frigid temperatures, some that could feel as cold as minus 30 degrees, moved across the U.S. East Coast on Friday as the region attempted to clean up from a massive winter storm that brought more than a foot of snow, hurricane-force winds and coastal flooding a day earlier.
Forecasters predict strong winds and record-breaking cold air will sweep the region, from the mid-Atlantic to New England, and hang around through the weekend.
“This is chilly, chilly stuff,” Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said.
The arctic blast could make temperatures feel as low as minus 15 degrees to minus 25 from Philadelphia to Boston and make residents of states like Maryland and Virginia shiver from temperatures ranging from 10 degrees to 15 degrees.
The wind chill could make it feel like minus 35 degrees in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts, the National Weather Service said.
The storm began days ago in the Gulf of Mexico and first struck the Florida Panhandle. By Thursday, it was wreaking havoc as blizzard warnings and states of emergency went into effect along the Eastern Seaboard. Wind gusts hit more than 113 kph in places and some areas saw as much as 46 centimetres of snow.
The storm caused school and business closings, airline and rail service cancellations or reductions and thousands of utilities outages, many of them restored quickly. Some ferry services even had to be shut down along the Canadian coast.
In New England, powerful winds brought coastal flooding that reached historic levels in some communities with icy water overflowing piers, streets and restaurants and stranding some people who had to be rescued.
At least seven people died in weather-related accidents.
Four people were killed in North Carolina and South Carolina after their vehicles ran off snow-covered roads, authorities said. Another fatality was reported near Philadelphia when a car could not stop at the bottom of a steep, snow-covered hill and slammed into a commuter train. A passenger in the vehicle was killed. No one on the train was hurt.
In Virginia, a girl was struck by a pickup truck while sledding, and a 75-year-old man was hit by a snow plow while clearing business parking lots, authorities said. Both died at hospitals from their injuries, police said.