SNOW BRINGS EAST COAST TO STANDSTILL
A blizzard with hurricane-force winds brought much of the East Coast to a standstill Saturday, dumping as much as 3 feet of snow, stranding tens of thousands of travelers and shutting down the nation’s capital and its largest city.
After days of weather warnings, most of the 80 million people in the storm’s path heeded requests to stay home and off the roads, which were largely deserted. Yet at least 18 deaths were blamed on the weather — most from traffic accidents, but several people also diedwhile shoveling snow.
Andmore snowwas yet to come, with dangerous conditions expected to persist until early Sunday, forecasters warned.
“This is going to be one of those generational events, where your parents talk about how bad it was,” Ryan Maue, a meteorologist for WeatherBell Analytics, said from Tallahassee, Fla., which also saw some flakes.
The system was mammoth, dropping snow fromthe Gulf Coast to New England. By early afternoon, areas nearWashington had surpassed 30 inches, according to the weather service’s running totals. The heaviest unofficial report was in a rural area of West Virginia, not far from Harper’s Ferry, with 40 inches.
In addition to snow and wind, the National Weather Service predicted up to half an inch of ice for theCarolinas and potentially serious coastal flooding for the mid-Atlantic region.
By early evening, the core of the system was rolling away fromWashington toward NewYork, where normally bustling streets around Rockefeller Center, Penn Station and other landmarks were mostly empty. Those who did venture out walked down the middle of snow-covered streets to avoid even deeper drifts on the sidewalks.
With Broadway shows dark, thin crowds shuffled through a different kind of Great WhiteWay in Times Square.
As recently as Friday night, NewYork officials had expected the storm to top out at 18 inches. But that prediction jumped to 25 inches Saturday morning, and 28 by evening. Over 19 inches had fallen on Central Park by late afternoon, with more coming down hard.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo imposed a travel ban in the city, ordering all nonemergency vehicles off the roads. Commuter rails and above-ground segments of the subway shut down too, along with buses.