(New York) New York City and New Jersey announced travel bans, airlines canceled thousands of flights and even Broadway shows were canceled Sunday night, as a severe winter storm battered the northeastern United States, prompting blizzard warnings from Maryland to Massachusetts.
Updated yesterday at
Snow began to fall in New Jersey and New York as the storm moved north. The U.S. National Weather Service said 30 to 60 centimeters of snow was possible in many areas, accompanied by strong winds. Visibility was reduced to 400 meters or less in many areas. Authorities across the region have urged residents to avoid traveling.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a winter storm of this magnitude and a blizzard of this magnitude in the Northeast,” said Cody Snell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. “This is definitely a significant winter storm that will have a major impact on this part of the country. »
The weather service issued blizzard warnings for New York City and Long Island, Boston as well as coastal communities in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. A state of emergency was declared in New York and other parts of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts as authorities mobilized their teams.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a ban on all streets except in emergencies from 9 p.m. Sunday to noon Monday. Traffic restrictions were also planned in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and elsewhere in the region. Emergency alerts, broadcast en masse to New Yorkers’ cell phones, urged them to stay home “due to dangerous weather conditions related to the blizzard.”
PHOTO JEENAH MOON, REUTERS
A snow plow in New York
Airports across the region canceled flights ahead of the storm, and DoorDash even announced it was suspending its deliveries in the city overnight.
Further south, iconic sites like Arlington National Cemetery in Washington announced their closure on Monday.
The weather service said heavy snowfall was expected overnight, with accumulations of up to five centimeters per hour in places, before easing Monday afternoon.
It also reported that strong gusts could cause fog and warned of a “potentially historic and destructive storm” southeast of the Boston-Providence corridor.
The storm could meet the definition of a bomb cyclone, said Frank Pereira, another meteorologist with the weather service. We speak of a cyclonic bomb when a storm causes a pressure drop of at least 24 millibars in 24 hours.
“We expect a drop in precipitation of at least this magnitude over the next 24 hours,” Pereira said. I think that in the end, we can talk about a cyclone bomb. »
