Blizzard rolls up the East Coast
New cold blast that could break records is forecast to follow this weekend
A massive winter storm roared into the East Coast on Thursday, dumping as much as 17 inches of snow in some areas and unleashing hurricane-force winds and historic flooding that closed schools and offices and halted transportation from the Carolinas to Maine.
Forecasters expected the stormto be followed immediately by a blast of facestinging cold that could break records in more than two dozen cities and bring wind chills as low asminus 40 degrees this weekend.
Blizzard warnings and states of emergency were in wide effect, and wind gusts hitmore than 70mph in places. In parts of New England, snow fell as fast as 3 inches per hour.
Four people were killed in North and South Carolina after their vehicles ran off snow-covered roads, authorities said. One 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 New Jersey, Orlando Igmat’s car got stuck in a snowbank along the Garden State Parkway in Tinton Falls as he drove to work at Verizon. He waited a half-hour for a tow truck to pull him out.
More than 100,000 businesses and homes had lost power at some point Thursday. Many outages were restored by the day’s end, but officials from the midAtlantic to New England warned of strong wind gusts and frigid temperatures through Saturday.
InNewEngland, the powerful winds brought coastal flooding that reached historic levels in areas. The frigid waters overwhelmed fishing piers, streets and restaurants, and stranded people in homes and cars, prompting dozens of evacuations and rescues.
In Portland, Maine, the high tide nearly matched the 14.17 feet reported during the infamous blizzard of 1978 that walloped the Northeast.
In Boston, icy harbor wa- ters poured into downtown streets near popular tourist andbusiness areas. The National Weather Service said the waters reached “within a few tenths of an inch” of record levels and local officials across coastal Massachusetts braced for further tidal surges.
Mayor Marty Walsh said some of the areas hadn’t seen flooding in 30 years. “If anyone wants to question global warming, just see where the flood zones are,” the Democrat re- marked.
Schools, businesses and ferry services in parts of the Canadian coast were also shut down. Nova Scotia Power said it had more than 1,000 people at the ready in its biggest- ever pre-storm mobilization of personnel and resources.
The flight-tracking site Flight Aware reported more than 5,000 canceled flights across the United States. Those included more than two-thirds of flights in and out of New York City and Boston airports.
Rail servicewas affected. Amtrak operated a modified schedule between New York and Boston. Northeast Regional Service between Washington, D. C., and Newport News/ Norfolk, Virginia, was canceled.
Boston expected a low around minus 11 overnight Saturday into Sunday. Portland, Maine, and Burlington, Vermont, could see minus 16 and 19, respectively, the weather service said.
The massive storm began two days ago in the Gulf of Mexico and first struck the Florida Panhandle.
Some meteorologists described it as a “bomb cyclone,” a term that comes fromthe process of bombo-gensis, when the barometric pressure drops steeply in a short period.