People take a photo as snow falls in Central Park in New York City. Photo: AFP
By Brendan O'Brien and Rich McKay, Reuters
A powerful, fast-moving winter storm was blanketing the US Northeast on Wednesday with heavy snow, creating treacherous driving conditions for millions of Americans, while forcing schools to close and wreaking havoc on air travel.
More than 30 million people from West Virginia northeast into New England were under a winter storm warning as the Nor'easter pummeled parts of the area with as much as 15cm of heavy, wet snow overnight, the National Weather Service said.
In New York City, the nation's most populous city, rain turned to snow in the early morning hours. The city was expected to get as much of 18cm of snow throughout the day, making for hazardous driving conditions.
People walk on the sidewalk as snow falls in the Brooklyn, NYC. Photo: AFP
Snow was falling at a rate of up to 5cm an hour across the Lower Hudson Valley, just north of New York, the city's emergency management agency said on X.
"These bands will shift south over the next few hours through about noon, leading to quickly covered roads and hazardous driving conditions," the agency said, urging drivers to exercise caution.
New York Mayor Eric Adams in a video posted on X from the city's Queens borough said plows were out in full force clearing streets.
"The roads are not bad; there is some wet, heavy snow coming down," he said. "It's great to see there has been little or no cars on the road."
Jan Gautam, the head of the Manhattan-based snow removal company Novus Maintenance, said he was up all night and into the morning assembling his crews to run more than a dozen snow plows and 30 sidewalk plows to hit the streets on New York.
"Our phones haven't stopped ringing since the snow started," Gautam said. "We'll be out there as long as it's snowing."
Gautam manages about 100 employees who service more than 250 customers across the city, including hospitals and hotels.
"In a storm like this, with so much snow coming fast, we have to go back to the same locations over and over, to keep it clear and safe," he said.
Other parts of the region could get as much as 30cm of snow before the storm races east and out of the area later in the day. Boston could get 23cm of snow, prompting the city's mayor to declare a state of emergency.
Some 155,000 homes and businesses were without power in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and West Virginia, according to Poweroutage.us.
School districts across the region canceled in-person classes for the day, including New York City, which was holding classes remotely for its 1 million students.
People walk through the falling snow in Central Park. Photo: AFP
The storm brings a conclusive end to a "snow drought" in New York City that lasted almost two years. The snow-less stretch, which exacerbated concerns over global warming, officially concluded in mid-January, when an Arctic blast dropped about 3.5cm - little more than a dusting - in Manhattan's Central Park.
Tuesday's snow is expected to easily top that snowfall, creating conditions for sledding and snowball fights, albeit briefly.
More than 1,000 fights to and from New York's LaGuardia, Boston Logan International and Newark Liberty International airports were either delayed or canceled, according to Flightaware.com.
Strong winds of up to 40 miles per hour (64 kilometers per hour) and coastal flooding were also forecast along the New England coast, as well as the New Jersey shore areas and Long Island.
An empty high school in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Photo: AFP
The winter storm bearing down on the New York City region could hamper voter turnout for a special election to fill the U.S. congressional seat vacated by the ouster of Republican George Santos.
A Democratic victory would narrow the razor-thin majority in the lower house currently enjoyed by a fractious Republican caucus.
- This story was first published by Reuters