After blizzard, snowed-in East Coast prepares to dig out

The blizzard surpassed the storm of 1888 and came in second only to a 2006 blizzard that left 26.9 inches of snow, a tenth of an inch more than Saturday’s storm, WABC, New York, reported.

After dumping about 60cm of snow on the Washington area overnight, the storm unexpectedly gathered strength as it spun northward and headed into the NY metropolitan area, home to about 20 million people. One person died in Maryland and three in New York City while shoveling snow.

High winds battered the entire East Coast, from North Carolina to NY, reaching 70 miles per hour (112.5 km) in Wallops Island, Virginia, late on Friday, whipping up the tides and causing coastal flooding, said National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Gallina.

(Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via AP).

Officials said the storm, which forecasters predicted would end by early this morning in the Washington area, could cause more than US$1 billion (RM4.3 billion) in damage.

People dig out cars on a sunny day following a blizzard on January 24, 2016 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. He urged residents to stay off streets so city crews could clear the roads. Governor Andrew Cuomo says numerous railroad’s yards are still buried in more than two feet of snow and tracks are still impeded by stranded trains and frozen switches. The decision to close the subways drew criticism from some business owners and transit advocacy groups, but the mayor and governor said the forecast had left them no choice.

The system was mammoth, dropping snow from the Gulf Coast to New England. The heaviest official report was 42 inches (107 centimetres), in Glengary, West Virginia.

Numerous storm-related deaths were people who suffered heart attacks while shoveling.

The vast majority of flights were canceled across much of the region, but authorities said they were working around the clock to restore operations today, with the first arrivals and departures expected at midday in NY. The 26.6 inches (67.6 centimetres) that fell on Saturday, however, was the city’s record for a single day.

Washington’s records were less clear.

It was the biggest snowstorm on record in Baltimore, which logged 29.2 inches passing the 26.8 inches measured in February 16-18, 2003.

The record high of 28 inches of snow in the nation’s capital was set in 1922 and the deepest recent snowfall was 17.8 inches in 2010.

“Then no more than 15 minutes later, I heard commotion out my window and I looked and I saw the raging water”, he said”. “They were really excited that it finally snowed here and wanted to play in it”. Video footage on CNN showed water pouring into downtown Margate, New Jersey, near Atlantic City, an area still recovering from Superstorm Sandy three years ago.

Louisiana: 2.5 inches in Haynesville, near the Arkansas border. That one killed some of the cows a farmer had herded inside.

“I’m really concerned”, he said.

Hurricane-force winds of 75mph were recorded at Dewey Beach in DE, and at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

Blizzard conditions require winds sustained or frequently gusting to 35 mph and visibility below 0.25 miles. What’s more, there were bursts of thunder and lightning. But bus and rail service was expected to be limited around the region into Monday, making for a complicated commute. Philadelphia’s airport said it would cancel all flights scheduled for Saturday.

At the D.C. National Zoo, 22 inches of snow fell; at JFK airport in New York City, 30 inches; in the western suburbs of D.C., 36 inches were recorded; in Shepherdstown, W.V., more than 40 inches.

In New York, Bruce Springsteen canceled his Sunday concert at Madison Square Garden, but Broadway shows were resuming on the Great White Way after going dark at the last minute on Saturday. And New Yorkers mostly listened, if for no other reason than there wasn’t really anywhere to go. More than 600 people RSVP’s to organizer Aaron Brazell’s invite on Facebook.

“It’s expanding and coming east”, Petersen said.

“I’ve never seen snow like this”.

Nuckols reported from Burke, Virginia. Contributors include Associated Press writers William Mathis, Scott Mayerowitz and Jake Pearson in New York; Alex Brandon and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington; Jessica Gresko in Arlington, Virginia; Ben Nuckols in Burke, Virginia; Juliet Linderman in Baltimore; Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee; Claire Garofalo in Louisville, Kentucky; John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; and Bob Lentz in Philadelphia.

Forecasters said the storm – dubbed “Snowzilla” – dumped 56 centimetres of snow on Washington.