Snowstorm batters DC, moves east
Bad weather snarls Mid-Atlantic traffic
WASHINGTON: After a bruising holiday week of flight cancellations and record surges in Covid-19 cases, a powerful winter snowstorm on Monday further snarled US transport, shuttering the federal government and bringing Washington to a standstill.
The storm packed an unexpectedly fierce punch and appeared to have caught much of the capital city off guard, temporarily stranding US President Joe Biden on Air Force One and dumping up to 23 centimetres of snow on Washington.
Many Americans have been scrambling to return home after the Christmas and New Year period, with thousands of flights cancelled due to bad weather and airline staffing woes blamed in part on rising coronavirus infections among crews.
More than 4,900 flights on Monday, the first workday of this year, were cancelled globally as of 8.30pm local time on Monday, including 3,173 flights within, into or out of United States, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.
The latest string of flight cancellations — along with 6,775 US flight delays on Monday — compounded holiday travel misery.
While much of the US Mid-Atlantic was caught in the bad weather, conditions were acute in the capital and neighbouring states of Maryland and Virginia, where accumulation in some spots topped 30cm, according to meteorologists who described it as the region’s biggest snow storm in at least two years.
“This is a heavy snow,” said Mayor
Muriel Bowser of Washington, where plows scrambled to clear snow, trees and power lines tumbled, the US Senate postponed votes and health officials cancelled Covid testing.
“If it is not absolutely necessary for you to go out, stay home and off the roads,” she warned.
Airports were experiencing blizzard conditions, with authorities at Washington and Baltimore airports reportedly ordering temporary ground stops during a midday whiteout.
Mr Biden himself was snowed in aboard his presidential aircraft after landing at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, with deboarding delayed by half an hour so the tarmac could be plowed.
The winter blast offered a distraction from Washington’s endless political divides: in bucolic scenes, children were seen sledding on Capitol Hill, while adventurers cross-country skied on the National Mall.
But for everyday passengers, holiday travel morphed into a nightmare.
“Hey @SouthwestAir can you stop cancelling every single flight out of DCA [Washington National Airport]? I need to go home!” passenger Kyle Hughes wrote on Twitter.
Federal workers in and around the capital were told to stay home. But with telework becoming routine during the two-year coronavirus pandemic, it was
unclear how much of the government would be affected.
Schools around the region were also closed due to snow.
Airports in Chicago and Atlanta — major transit hubs — as well as Denver, Detroit, Houston and Newark were hard hit over the weekend.
By Monday evening the east coast airports in New York, Washington and Baltimore were scrapping the most flights.