Snow-battered Californians weather another storm; Northeast greets one
RUNNING SPRINGS, Calif. — Jennifer Cobb and her husband planned on staying four days in their vacation rental in Southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains. But that stretched into a week as they were trapped by a relentless series of storms that has piled snow so high they can barely see out the windows.
When they try to shovel themselves out, it just snows again. They’re thinking of walking to a main road to see if they can hitch a ride down the mountain so they can get home to their teenage daughter and Cobb’s elderly father in San Diego County.
“We hear the phantom sounds of plows, but they never come,” she said. “Being stuck up here in this beautiful place shouldn’t be awful, but it is.”
Cobb and other beleaguered Californians weathered yet another storm Tuesday, as blizzard warnings blanketed the Sierra Nevada range in the northern half of the state, more snow was on its way to the southern mountains like the San Bernardino range, and forecasters warned that any travel was dangerous.
On the eastern flank of the Sierra, the Mono County Sheriff’s Office bluntly tweeted: “The roads are closed. All of them. There is no alternate route, back way, or secret route. It’s a blizzard, people.”
The latest storm in California was one of two bookending the country, with snow closing or delaying the opening for hundreds of schools in the Northeast, which saw the most significant snowfall Tuesday of what has been a mild winter.
And Michigan again fought a battle with ice after a storm Monday left thousands of customers without power in the central part of the state. To the southeast, around Detroit, some customers still lacked power for a sixth day after a prior storm.
The storms have delayed travel, shuttered schools and overwhelmed crews trying to dig out of the snow and repair downed power lines. Nationwide, there were about 500 commercial flight cancellations and more than 2,000 delays on Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com.
In the West, the weather was expected to last into Wednesday, with winter storm warnings stretching from the Oregon coast to many of Southern California’s already-snow-laden mountains.
In the Northeast, parts of Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island had heavy snow forecast through Tuesday afternoon. Some areas of western Massachusetts and northern Connecticut were left with about 7 inches of snow. Two to 5 inches of snow fell across New York City, depending on the borough. The Albany, N. Y., area saw less snow than expected — 2 to 5 inches — but enough to close schools.