The first winter storm of the year, trailed by frigid cold, dumped heavy snow on the northern quarter of the country Thursday and snarled air traffic nationwide.
Midwest
Beginning New Year’s Day and continuing overnight, the storm dropped as much as 18 inches of snow on suburban Chicago and up to 10 inches on Michigan. Below-zero cold is expected across the region over the next few days.
AAA Michigan said it received 3,100 calls Thursday from drivers dealing with spinouts, cars in ditches and dead batteries. Accidents and delays were also reported from Missouri to New Hampshire.
“Anything below 25 degrees and the salt isn’t nearly as effective,” said Becky Allmeroth, a maintenance engineer with the state of Missouri, where crews were mixing chemicals and beet juice with salt to try to make roads passable.
Authorities said the weather may have been a factor in several fatal crashes, including one Wednesday evening involving a pickup and a bus carrying casino patrons in Indiana. Police said the truck’s driver was killed and 15 bus passengers were injured in the collision on a snow-covered and slushy highway in Rolling Prairie.
Northeast
Up to 14 inches of snow was expected Thursday and overnight in a region extending from Washington, D.C., north. The National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for Cape Cod, coastal areas north and south of Boston and part of Maine as well as New York’s Long Island, where winds could gust to 45 mph.
Many schools in New England and New York closed well ahead of the snow, while cities mobilized plows and salt spreaders and state offices sent workers home early. Some major highways were ordered shut down overnight.
The heavy weather began rolling in just a day after New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was sworn in to lead the nation’s largest city and a few days before Boston Mayor Thomas Menino ends 20 years in office. Menino announced a parking ban and said schools would be closed Friday in Boston. “What a New Year’s gift, to receive one last snowstorm as mayor,” said Menino, whose successor takes office Monday.
De Blasio, who in 2010 criticized his predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for his handling of a post-Christmas storm, ordered hundreds of plows and salt spreaders onto the streets as soon as the snow started falling Thursday night. “We have to get it right, no question about it,” de Blasio said.
Forecasters said temperatures in the wake of the storm will plummet, with some areas seeing highs just above zero Friday and wind-chill readings of minus-10 and colder.
Nationwide
Airlines canceled more than 2,300 flights nationwide Thursday in advance of the storm, and Boston’s Logan International said it would not handle any flights after 8:30 p.m. Thursday. Hundreds of planes were grounded at Chicago’s busy O’Hare International Airport, and major delays were reported as far away as Houston. Few U.S. airports escaped without some cancellations and flight delays.
While the worst of the cold was expected in the nation’s northern tier, the South was also bracing. The National Weather Service posted freeze warning as far south as the Florida panhandle and central Louisiana, and the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia were hit with both snow and forecasts of single-digit low temperatures. Relief could be days away, with the cold expected to persist through at least Tuesday.
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