New York:
A major blizzard has closed down transport on the US east coast from Philadelphia to Boston, emptying roads and urban streets as people followed official warnings urging to go home and stay home.
Air, road and rail movement came to a standstill across the US north-east as the region that is home to 40 million people braced through Saturday for what forecasters say could be the biggest blizzard in a century.
Up to 18 centimetres of snow had fallen by late afternoon (2300 GMT) in some parts of Maine and New York state, with the full brunt of the storm expected beginning late evening (0200 GMT Saturday) and into noon Saturday from Philadelphia to New York and Boston.
Cities in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York were expecting up to 30 centimetres of snow, while Boston faces more than 100 centimetres by the time the storm moves out to the Atlantic Ocean by midday Saturday, weather forecasters said.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged people to simply stay at home.
“Tonight, what’s a good idea? Cook a meal, stay home, read a good book, watch a movie, just take it easy,” Bloomberg said.
POWER OUTAGE
Forecasters warned that the storm could leave up to 140,000 homes and businesses in the northeast without electricity.
Five states — New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island — declared states of emergency on Friday as the storm approached. Thousands of people had their travel plans disrupted as more than 5,000 flights from some 60 airports were cancelled, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Toronto, according to FlightAware, the tracking website.
Severe weather warnings reached from Pennsylvania to Maine’s border with Canada, with coastal flood warnings as far south as Delaware. Hurricane-force winds were anticipated for the south shore of Long Island from the Hamptons to Montauk at the eastern tip. Rail travel was also affected, with Amtrak suspending train services between New York and Boston as well as in Vermont and Maine.
By Friday night more than 140,000 electricity customers mostly in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut - were without power, a number that was expected to grow.
New York City, where 1,700 ploughs and 450 salt spreaders were ready to be deployed as darkness fell, was expecting to see 10 to 14 inches of snow with accumulations of up to 19 inches on eastern Long Island.
From New Jersey to Maine, shoppers crowded into supermarkets and hardware stores throughout Friday to buy food, snow shovels, flashlights and generators, something that became a precious commodity after October’s superstorm Sandy. Schools in several states closed early so students could get home before the worst of the storm.
Connecticut’s emergency management agency warned on Twitter that “a wide ban of extremely heavy snow” was moving through the central and eastern parts of the State, dropping snow at a rate of up to five inches an hour.
Boston declared a snow emergency and shut down all public transit on Friday afternoon. City officials said 600 pieces of snow-clearing equipment and 34,000 tonnes of salt were ready for use.
Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts, banned all private vehicles from the state’s roads after 4pm. Cars were also banned in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Thousands of power outages were reported across the state.
As icy rain turned to snow over Manhattan on Friday afternoon, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg urged residents to leave work early and stock up on supplies such as medicine in the event of power failures. He warned that falling tree branches overloaded with snow could knock down power lines.
Bloomberg said there was no need for panic-buying as “the gas supply is plentiful”. However, queues formed at filling stations as worried motorists filled up their cars.
Bloomberg warned: “Stay off the city streets, stay out of your cars and stay in your homes while the worst of the storm is on us.”
The Long Island Power Authority, which came under intense criticism following its performance during Sandy, turned command of its storm response over to National Grid, the utility that provides power to hundreds of thousands of customers on Long Island.
New York City officials said that as of late January some 6,000 families were still waiting for repairs to heat, hot water or power systems in 3,000 buildings that had been damaged by Sandy. Bloomberg said the city would find shelter for people living in unheated homes.
Residents of Brick Township, New Jersey, were asked to voluntarily evacuate on Friday from their homes in flood-prone areas that had been battered by October’s storm.
The storm arrived days after the 35th anniversary of the “Blizzard of ’78” which buried Boston in a then-record 27.1 inches of snow and left thousands of motorists stranded on Massachusetts roads. Hurricane-force winds built drifts to as high as 27 feet. The bodies of some of the 99 people who died in the Bay State and Rhode Island weren’t found for days. Two February blizzards, in 2003 and 2011, surpassed that epic storm’s snowfall, both by less than an inch.
