Wind, snow, waves and lost lives
Thousands are stranded, up to 13 dead
BOSTON— Homeowners and motorists dug out across the snow-blanketed northeast on Friday as extreme cold ushered in by the storm threatened fingers and toes. At least 13 deaths were blamed on the storm as it swept across the nation’s eastern half.
While the snowfall had all but stopped by morning across the hardhit Philadelphia-to-Boston corridor and many highways and streets were soon cleared and reopened, temperatures were in the single digits and teens, with wind chills well below zero.
“The snow is easy to move because the air was so cold when it snowed that it’s sort of light and fluffy stuff — but, uh, it’s cold,” Avalon Minton said in Arlington, Mass. “That’s the main part. It’s cold.”
And officials from the upper Midwest to New England were preparing for another Arctic blast in the next few days that could be even worse.
The heaviest snow fell north of Boston in Boxford, Mass., which received nearly 60 centimetres. Nearly 45 centimetres fell in Boston and in western New York near Rochester. Lakewood, N.J., got 25 centimetres, while New York’s Central Park and Philadelphia got more than 15 centimetres.
Temperatures reached -22 C in Burlington, Vt. — with a wind chill of -34 C — and -19 C in Boston. Wind chills there and in Providence, R.I., made it feel like -29 C Friday morning and the forecast called for more of the same into Saturday.
Emergency officials warned that anyone spending more than a few minutes outdoors in such conditions could suffer frostbite.
Warming centres opened around the region, homeless shelters received more people, and cities took special measures to look after those most vulnerable to the cold. Teams in New York City searched the streets for homeless people, while in Boston, police asked residents to call 911 if they saw someone in need.
In Newport, R.I., the Seaman’s Church Institute said it would stay open round-the-clock until the cold breaks to give mariners and others who work in or around the harbour a warm place to stay, shower and eat.
Only a few thousand power outages were reported across the northeast.
Slick roads were blamed for several traffic deaths. In addition, a 71-yearold woman with Alzheimer’s disease froze to death after she wandered away from her rural western New York home.
A worker in Philadelphia was killed when a 30-metre-high pile of road salt fell and crushed him.
Schools as far south as Washington, D.C., were closed on Friday.
Many government offices also shut down.
Major highways in and around New York reopened, and airports across the region struggled to resume normal operations after U.S. airlines cancelled around 2,200 flights on Friday on top of 2,300 the day before.
In Wisconsin, the mercury dipped to -28 C Friday morning in Green Bay, breaking by a single degree the record set in 1979. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton ordered school cancelled on Monday statewide, the first such closing in 17 years, because of lows as cold as -34 C.