“Snowmaggedon” brings East Coast to a standstill
At least 18 people dead, resulting from car crashes, shoveling snow and hypothermia
SILVER SPRING, Maryland— A blizzard with hurricane-force winds brought much of the US East Coast to a standstill on Saturday, dumping as much as three feet (90 centimeters) of snow, stranding tens of thousands of travelers and shutting down Washington and New York 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, resulting from car crashes, shoveling snow and hypothermia. And more snow was 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, Florida, which also got some flakes.
The system was mammoth, dropping snow from the Gulf Coast to the northeastern New England states.
By afternoon, areas near Washington had surpassed 30 inches (75 centimeters).
The heaviest unofficial report was in a rural area of West Virginia, not far from Harper’s Ferry, with 40 inches (100 centimeters).
Airlines canceled nearly 7,000 weekend flights and started to cut Monday service.
As the storm picked up, forecasters increased their snow predictions for New York and points north and warned areas nearly as far north as Boston to expect heavy snow.
“This is kind of a Top 10 snowstorm,” said weather service winter storm expert Paul Kocin, who co-wrote a two-volume textbook on blizzards.
It was Top 3 in New York City, where more than 25 inches (62.5 centimeters) of snow had fallen as of 7 p.m. Saturday, close to the record, 26.9 inches (68.3 centimeters), set in February 2006.
Three people died while shoveling snow. The normally bustling streets around Rockefeller Center, Penn Station and other landmarks were mostly empty.
Those who did venture out walked down the middle of snowcovered streets to avoid even deeper drifts on the sidewalks.
With Broadway shows dark, thin crowds shuffled through a different kind of Great White Way in Times Square.
Officials imposed a travel ban in the city, ordering all nonemergency vehicles off the roads.
Commuter rails and aboveground segments of the nation’s biggest subway system shut down, too, along with buses.
Without a bus, home health aide Elijah Scarboro couldn’t get to his next client, an 89-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease.
“I wish I could get there, but I can’t,” Scarboro said, hoping the man would be safe at home with his wife. As recently as Friday night, New York officials had expected the storm to top out at 18 inches (45 centimeters).