The weather in northeast United States turned frightful as a powerful nor’easter dumped heavy snow, which left flights grounded, schools closed and electricity nonexistent to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.
More than 40 million people were under blizzard warnings from Maryland to Maine, per USA Today, as the storm dropped 2 to 3 inches of snow per hour as winds up to 70 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
New York City’s official emergency notification system warned residents heavy snow and intense winds will continue throughout the morning.
“Several bands of very heavy snow will likely persist through mid- morning across the area with snowfall rates of 1 – 2 inches per hour, possibly locally higher & northerly wind gusts of 40 – 60 mph will produce blizzard conditions,” the notification, issued at 7:30 a.m., said.
By 7 a.m., parts of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut recorded 18 to 24 inches of snow. There was more than 15 inches in Central Park Sunday night.
More than 5,300 flights were canceled Monday, according to FlightAware. Street closures increased as snow piled up and whiteout conditions made for “potentially life-threatening” travel conditions, the weather service said.
Over 443,000 power outages were reported across the Northeast Monday morning. The most outages were in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, according to poweroutage.us.
A total of 24.2 inches of snow was recorded in Freehold, New Jersey, according to the National Weather Service report updated at 7:27 a.m.
Snowfall totals closed in on 2 feet across the Mid-Atlantic region. On Long Island, the village of Quogue had 23.5 inches of snow and Montauk recieved 22 inches.
Northeast universities across the region rescheduled classes and switched to remote learning.
Colombia University and New York University moved to remote instruction. Harvard’s schedule changes varied. The business school was holding in-person classes, but its law school switching to virtual learning.
