More snow for Northeast
Thousands of flights grounded from Chicago to Boston
Dylan Chestnutt endures wind-whipped snow Monday while walking during a storm in single-digit temperatures in Portland, Maine. Winter storm warnings stretched from Ohio through Maine, and more than 4,000 flights were canceled.
BOSTON — A storm that dropped record-setting snow on Chicago swept east across the U.S., grounding thousands of flights and bringing as much as another foot to Boston, which already had more than 24 inches on the ground from a blizzard last week.
In New York, the snow changed to rain, then back to snow, creating slushy and icy conditions for commuters.
Winter storm warnings stretched from eastern Ohio through Maine in the U.S. and similar alerts, along with blizzard and blowing snow warnings, were in place from southern Ontario to Newfoundland in Canada, according to national weather agencies in both countries.
Across the U.S., 4,007 flights were canceled as of 4:41 p.m. New York time, with the most at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, according to FlightAware, a Houston-based airline tracking company.
Yesterday, 2,566 trips were scrubbed, with Chicago being the hardest-hit.
A daily record of 16.2 inches fell at O’Hare on Sunday, breaking the mark set in 2011, the National Weather Service said. Schools closed Monday in Chicago, Boston, Cleveland and Detroit, and Boston decided to keep children home today as well.
The storm delayed two of the nation’s biggest court cases — the murder trial of former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez and jury selection in the federal death penalty trial of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Testimony was to resume today in the Hernandez trial. But federal court officials in Boston said the Tsarnaev proceedings would be delayed a second day.
Fifty-seven-year-old Cynthia Levine was struck and killed by a snowplow just before 10 a.m. Monday in the parking lot of a condominium complex in Weymouth, south of Boston, the Norfolk district attorney’s office said.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh urged drivers to stay off the roads so workers could clear away snow for a downtown parade honoring the New England Patriots for their fourth Super Bowl win.
The parade had been set for this morning, but late Monday, Walsh announced that it would be postponed until 11 a.m. Wednesday to buy the city some time.
“We look forward to celebrating with Patriots fans during better weather on Wednesday,” the mayor said in a statement.
By early Monday afternoon, Boston had officially had its snowiest week on record, recording 34.2 inches in a seven-day period, the National Weather Service said. Lunenberg, Mass., about 25 miles north of Worcester in the center of the state, had received 24 inches by Monday night.
“Mother Nature’s not going to help out with snow removal, this week anyway,” said Alan Dunham, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service forecast office in Taunton, Mass.
The size and intensity of the storm in Chicago, where 19 inches fell, caught some forecasters by surprise.
“We issued a winter storm watch on Friday and over the weekend, we did start to realize that this was a bigger and bigger event and we started to see things unfold,” said Ben Deubelbeiss, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Chicago.
New York’s LaGuardia Airport had received 5.2 inches as of 3 p.m. Monday, according to the prediction center. Cleveland, which got 7.2 inches Sunday, may pick up another inch before the storm winds down from west to east, the weather service said. The Toronto area may get 10 to 14 inches before it is over, Environment Canada said.
The National Weather Service issued a “flash freeze” warning for New York City and Long Island. Similar warnings were out for Philadelphia and up the coast to Maine as temperatures dropped, freezing roads already slick with snow and slush.
Rush-hour commuters in New York City were stranded on a packed subway train that lost power for 2½ hours Monday before it could be towed to a station. Five other trains were stuck behind it.
In New York, state police said they were investigating a two-vehicle crash on Interstate 95 when a third vehicle lost control on the highway and hit the two vehicles from the first crash, killing two people.
The cause was not immediately known, but the crash occurred as snow and freezing rain hindered travel. Information for this article was contributed by Brian K. Sullivan of Bloomberg News; by Jess Bidgood, Katharine Q. Seelye and Mitch Smith of The New York
Times; and by Philip Marcelo, Denise Lavoie, Mark Pratt, Sylvia Lee Wingfield and Pat Eaton-Robb of The Associated Press.