DC braces for a top-10 blizzard

Conditions quickly became treacherous along the path of the storm. Already, several people have died in accidents on icy roads.

Washington looks like the bull’s-eye of the blizzard, and New York City is just inside the slow-moving storm’s sharp northern edge, which means it is likely to see heavy accumulations, Uccellini said.

Washington DC, New York and other East Coast cities readied fleets of snow plows and airlines cancelled flights ahead of a winter storm expected to dump up to 30 inches (76 cm) of snow.

Winter storm warnings and advisories stretched from MS to MA.

The good news? Meteorologists appear to have gotten this storm right. She said snow is expected to start arriving between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., a little earlier than previously forecast. “It has life and death implications”.

The sprawling storm will blast snow across 15 states beginning Friday afternoon and evening and continuing well into Sunday, forecasters say.

At sunrise in Memphis, Tennessee, nurse Danielle Aldridge couldn’t find her ice scraper, so she used a plastic kitchen cutting board to clear her windshield.

Late Thursday, she got her wish. “That’s part of the deal”.

Just before dawn, rain became sleet became snow outside of Nashville. Other parts of the state could get a foot of snow.

“We are in a different physical environment”, he said. Forecasters expect flooding, though not as bad as Superstorm Sandy’s. In 2010, she and her daughter were stuck at home with nothing but noodles and water. Her husband survived, but it took him hours to climb up the 300-foot embankment and get help. In Washington, Baltimore, and DE, archdioceses pre-emptively excused Catholics from showing up for Sunday Mass. Thousands of flights have been canceled, and officials are urging citizens to stay off the roads.

In the world of sports, two NBA games, an National Hockey League game, numerous college basketball games and the NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony were all postponed, the AP reports.

The snowfall could easily cause more than $1 billion in damage and paralyze the Eastern third of the nation, weather service director Louis Uccellini said.

Federal offices in the Washington area closed at noon on Friday to allow employees to get home before the snow began piling up. Many people in the region stayed home from work, and ridership on the rails was down by half, Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said. Still, there are legitimate concerns that this storm will go above and beyond the norm in many ways – both in terms of what falls from the sky and how fast the wind blows, both of which could produce massive power outages.

Train service could be disrupted as well, by frozen switches, the loss of third-rail electric power or trees falling on overhead wires.

The bulk of Friday’s 2,900 cancellations are in Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., according to flight tracking service FlightAware. By Sunday afternoon, airlines hope to be back to full schedules. Underground stations usually stay open during major snowstorms. It will be held today, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

But D.C. residents who dare step out into the post-blizzard world can enjoy one activity – legally – for the first time in decades.

While some people and businesses anxious about the snow, at least one industry could see a potential boon: ski resorts.

At least one industry could benefit: Eastern ski resorts, which suffered from December’s record high temperatures.

The line between heavy snow and not much at all will be a fine one in the NY area, so the area just north of the city will probably have amounts drop off sharply.