NEW YORK (AP) — A massive snowstorm pummeled the northeast United States on Monday, forcing millions of people to stay home amid strong wind and blizzard warnings, transportation shutdowns, and school and business closures.
The storm hit the metropolitan northeast as accumulations from an earlier snowfall had just melted away — except for gray mountainous piles in parking lots and along the side of roads. Officials declared emergencies from Delaware to Massachusetts, and hundreds of thousands of people grappled with power failure from downed electrical lines.
Even as digging out began, the National Weather Service warned Monday that perilous conditions could persist.
“The combination of heavy snowfall and strong winds will continue to produce blizzard conditions along the Northeastern Seaboard,” the weather service said Monday. “Sharply reduced visibility will make travel extremely treacherous across these areas.”
The weather service referred to the storm as a “classic bomb cyclone/nor’easter off the Northeast coast.” A bomb cyclone happens when a storm’s pressure falls by a certain amount within a 24-hour period, occurring mainly in the fall and winter when frigid Arctic air can reach the south and clash with warmer temperatures.
New York City and Boston canceled public school classes for Monday, while Philadelphia switched to online learning. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called it the “first old-school snow day since 2019.”
The weather service said the snow was expected to taper off by New York, Philadelphia and other cities, as well as several states, declared emergencies.
More than 5,000 flights in and out of the United States were canceled for Monday, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Most were canceled in New York, New Jersey and Boston. Rhode Island’s T.F. Green International Airport announced Monday that it was temporarily ending all airport operations.
Public transit ground to a halt in some areas, while DoorDash suspended deliveries in New York City overnight.
Storm-related power outages plunged more than 500,000 customers into darkness along the East Coast early Monday, including over 212,000 customers in Massachusetts and 128,000 customers in New Jersey, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide.
About 10,000 customers were without power Monday morning on suburban Long Island. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said utility crews would restore power as soon as possible, but winds of 50 mph or higher could delay action.
Snow causes travel woes and closures
Commuters in and around New York felt the strain.
In New York City, several subway lines reported severe delays, while the Long Island Rail Road was fully suspended until further notice. Some Metro-North commuter trains between New York City and its suburbs were delayed by up to an hour. New Jersey Transit suspended bus and rail services “until further notice.”
The weather service said strong wind gusts could cause whiteout conditions and warned of a “Potentially Historic/Destructive Storm” southeast of the Boston-Providence corridor.
“Winds like that, combined with heavy, wet snow, are a recipe for damaged trees and prolonged power outages,” said Bryce Williams, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Boston office. “That’s what we’re most concerned with, is the combination of those extreme snow amounts with that wind.”
