NEW YORK – Hundreds of flights have been grounded across the United States after a pair of winter storms left more than 30cm of snow in New York’s Hudson Valley and sparked blizzard warnings across the Great Plains.
The first storm brought heavy snow on Jan 7 across Boston and New England, the National Weather Service said.
Regions to the north and west of New York City, including the upper Hudson River Valley, received 15cm to 30.5cm of snow.
Mr Greg Carbin, branch chief of the US Weather Prediction Centre, said: “Orange County, New York, they got a solid foot (30.5cm) there. Port Jervis got 13 inches (33cm).”
New York City was spared the worst of the weather, with Manhattan’s Central Park getting mostly rain.
While the storm in the east pulled away through Jan 7, a second was moving across the western states, sparking winter storm warnings and weather advisories from Arizona to Illinois and a blizzard warning in New Mexico and Colorado.
The two systems had contributed to 692 flight cancellations across the US as at early Jan 7, with Boston, Newark, Seattle and Chicago hardest hit, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking company.
Passenger-rail carrier Amtrak has cancelled some trains to Boston, as well as across the Midwest.
In addition, about 11,800 customers were without power in Massachusetts, mainly in Middlesex County north and west of Boston, according to PowerOutage.us.
New York’s Central Park got just 0.5cm of snow as at 7am on Jan 6, which meant its record for the longest streak without at least an inch of snow continued, Mr Carbin said.
As at Jan 6, Manhattan had gone 692 days without at least an inch of snow, smashing the prior mark of 383 days that ended on March 21, 1998, according to the weather service.
Looking ahead, the western storm will likely bring heavy snow across the Midwest, including 22.9cm just west of Chicago on Jan 8 night into Jan 9, and flooding to the eastern United States as downpours land on the melting snowpack.
Parts of New York and New Jersey that got a lot of snow through Jan 7 will have 2.5cm to 7.6cm of rain fall from Jan 9 to Jan 10, Mr Carbin said. “That is not going to do anything to help out the streams and rivers.”
Mr Carbin added that snow will wind down in upstate New York and would continue in Boston and New England through the rest of Jan 7.
After an unseasonably warm December, the first snow of 2024 was greeted with a sense of relief, at least by Mr Jesse Floyd, 57, of Boxborough, Massachusetts.
“New England winters should include snow,” he said. “It’s been too long since the last big storm. I can’t wait to get out and do some snowshoeing.”
Mr Walter Lark, 35, and his son Ira, 3, enjoyed the slushy snowfall as they walked through the College Hill neighbourhood of Providence, Rhode Island.
“My tongue is freezing,” Ira said, clutching and biting into a compact snowball. Asked if the snowball snack in his hand was tasty, Ira’s eyes lit up, and he answered with a satisfied “mhmm!”
Mr Lark, though, said he was disappointed in the paltry showing of snow. “I was hoping for more snow because it’s fun,” he added.
The fresh snow was also especially welcome at West Mountain ski centre, in Queensbury, New York, 32km north of Saratoga Springs. There has not been a spot of snow on lawns the past few weeks and business was down 80 per cent during the holidays, said Mr Spencer Montgomery, the ski centre’s co-owner.
The main benefit of Jan 7’s fresh snowfall was to get people thinking about skiing, he added.
“It’s like running a restaurant and society’s lost their appetite,” Mr Montgomery said. “That’s what the natural snow does. It makes people hungry.” BLOOMBERG, NYTIMES
