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The blizzard that dropped a foot or more of snow across a staggeringly wide area of the country, from Oklahoma up through a paralyzed Chicago and across parts of an ice-glazed New England, finally began to weaken Wednesday. It left behind a long trail of spun-out cars, darkened homes, closed schools and stranded fliers.

But the harsh winter weather was not over, forecasters warned: a bitter cold front threatened to follow the storm, bringing subzero temperatures to many areas trying to dig out.

So even as Chicago was trying to recover from the third-biggest snowfall in its history — a monster of a storm that smothered the city in 20.2 inches of snow, stranded hundreds of drivers on Lake Shore Drive for hours, closed the city’s schools for the first time in a dozen years and whipped up gusts that reached 70 miles an hour at one point — the National Weather Service was still issuing warnings. The temperature there was expected to fall to 5 below zero overnight, and to 20 below in outlying areas, with the wind chill making it feel colder.

“It’s going to be a while before the snow and ice melts in a lot of areas,” said Christopher Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Weather Service, noting that cold air was expected to pour down from northern Wisconsin all the way to Houston, which is forecast to have a hard freeze. “This was a large, giant, powerful storm.”

It was a terrible day for travel, whether by train, plane or automobile. More than 6,000 flights, about a fifth of the country’s air traffic, were canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com, which tracks air travel. Amtrak shut down service between New York and Philadelphia during the morning rush hour, and canceled many trains in and out of Chicago. Not only were side roads closed by snow and ice, but Interstate highways also were shut down.

Two-thirds of the country seemed to be reeling from one form of extreme weather or another. There were tornado warnings along the Gulf Coast. Snow and ice forced Texas to institute rolling power blackouts. The heavy snow in Oklahoma left The Tulsa World unable to print the newspaper for the first time in its 106-year history. Both Milwaukee and Chicago groaned under heavy snow.

In New York, falling ice shut both the Verrazano-Narrows and George Washington Bridges for part of the morning. And the snow, ice and freezing rain continued to move east across New England, and might have contributed to the collapse of an office building in Middletown, Conn., that sprayed bricks across Main Street.

With 30 states feeling the storm’s impact, the National Weather Service had to upgrade its Web site to handle traffic that reached up to 20 million hits an hour, officials said. Snow fell from New Mexico and Texas up to Minnesota, and east to Maine. Several places were hit with more than two feet of snow, and by Wednesday evening more than a foot of snow had been recorded in parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and several other states were close behind.

In Washington, President Obama was briefed by officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The dangers of the storm were not over, and officials said it might have contributed to deaths from causes like car accidents and heart attacks in several states.

“The deep snow accumulation will make shoveling very difficult,” warned the National Weather Service, “and potentially deadly.”

Of course, all was not Snowmageddon. The white snow softened the hard edges of cities and towns around the nation, turning them into glittering Currier & Ives-like vistas, with stalactite icicles dripping from the eaves of houses. School closings made snowball fights easier, and the children of Chicago, many of whom had never had a snow day in their lives, found themselves sprung from classes not only on Wednesday but on Thursday as well.

But there were also plenty of headaches, and not only from the tear-inducing cold air that began to trickle down from the north. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were left without power, especially in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Commutes were slippery messes, where they were possible at all. In many places the temperatures dipped just in time to turn slushy streets into dangerously icy streets. Shoveling felt like a Sisyphean task, as new snow and ice kept coating the cleared sidewalks.

In Boston, which has already received more than five feet of snow this winter, the back-to-back snowstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday had some people feeling like they were living in a continuous loop. That it was Feb. 2 — Groundhog Day — was not lost on Peter Judge, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. “It’s Groundhog Day, and literally like ‘Groundhog Day’ the movie,” he said, in a nod to the film in which a day keeps repeating itself.

Reporting was contributed

by Monica Davey from Chicago,

Malcolm Gay from St. Louis,

A. G. Sulzberger from Kansas City, Mo.,

and Katie Zezima from Boston.

Storm Leaves Much of Country Shivering,
Shoveling and Awaiting More,
NYT,
2.2.2011,
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/
us/03storm.html

Huge Blizzard Snarls

Travel and Transit

in the Northeast

December 26, 2010
The New York Times
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

A monster blizzard that barreled up the coast on Sunday continued to swirl over the New York region and the Northeast into Monday morning, with barrages of wind-driven snow that closed airports, disrupted rail and highway travel and transformed a dozen states into enchanted and borderless white dreamscapes.

Its timing was diabolical — too late for a white Christmas, but just in time to disrupt the travel plans of thousands trying to get home after the holiday, to return unwanted gifts or to take advantage of post-holiday bargains at stores. Schools were not in session, but millions of commuters were told to expect nightmarish slogs in and around the cities.

With the great abyss of winter yet to be crossed, forecasters in advance were reaching for superlatives, saying the storm was likely to be one of the biggest blows of the season, with wind gusts up to 55 miles an hour and snow two feet deep in spots. The National Weather Service predicted snowfalls of 16 to 20 inches in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut by Monday afternoon, when the storm was to taper off.

Blizzard warnings — official forecasts of huge snowfalls with sustained winds of 35 miles an hour — were in effect from the Carolinas to New England. North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey declared states of emergency, and New York, Philadelphia and Boston declared snow emergencies, imposing parking bans on major thoroughfares and urging residents to stay off the roads.

The weather service called it the biggest storm in the region since last February, when record snowfalls paralyzed the mid-Atlantic states but largely spared New York City, and the first blizzard since Feb. 12, 2006, when the 24-hour record for Central Park, 26.9 inches, was set.

By Sunday evening, the storm had already been blamed for at least one death, after a driver slammed into a utility pole in Mount Olive Township, N.J., according to the police there.

The snow began falling in New York late Sunday morning, and by 5 p.m. it had already eclipsed the average of 3.3 inches for the month of December.

Through the afternoon, the storm grew into an adventure. The snow came down in great sweeping curtains, drifting over parked cars and park benches to be sculpted into aerodynamic shapes.

Everywhere, the winds whispered and moaned in their secret Ice Age language. The blizzard spawned lightning flashes and thunder. Yet the sounds of the city were strangely muffled and distant. Sledders, snowboarders, hikers and even a few skiers were soon out, cutting fresh trails along the marbled Hudson or in the wilderness of Central Park.

The surrounding skylines were lost in the whiteout, and the playing fields of the Great Lawn might have been the plains of Nebraska or a steppe.

It was not a bad day to stay at home with the paper and watch the storm through panes etched with frost.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, wearing a bomber jacket and wheezing with a cold at a late-afternoon news conference, called it a dangerous storm that could down trees, disrupt railroad signal systems and pose hazards for drivers and the homeless.

“The latest reports are qualifying this storm as a blizzard, and unfortunately our city is directly in its path,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

The mayor said major roads would be cleared by plows overnight, but he urged commuters to take mass transit on Monday. The Long Island Rail Road suspended service late Sunday night, but its trains were expected to run on a holiday schedule on Monday. Metro-North said it would operate Monday using a Sunday schedule. New Jersey Transit suspended all bus service Sunday night. (Read the latest updates on the status of mass transit.)

Amtrak, citing problems with high winds that affect signals, switches and overhead wires, canceled trains south of Washington to Richmond and Newport News, Va., and later those between New York and Boston, although service between Washington and New York was not affected.

“Better to have people stay safe where they are, despite the inconvenience,” Cliff Cole, an Amtrak spokesman, said of the cancellations.

Air travel was virtually impossible. More than 2,000 flights were canceled by major airlines on the Eastern Seaboard, 1,444 of them at Kennedy International and La Guardia Airports in New York and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. Spillback cancellations affected hundreds of other flights from Chicago and Atlanta, and even from London and Paris.

By Sunday night, Kennedy and Newark had suspended all flights, and few were operating out of La Guardia.

One terminal at Kennedy was transformed into a campsite of refugees. Entire families rested on stacks of luggage, slept on the floor in sleeping bags, watched movies on laptops and ate lunches on suitcases. People streamed to information booths, but it was hopeless: Boards listed nearly all flights as canceled.

On the AirTrain to Kennedy from Jamaica, travelers told their tales of woe and hope. Luciana and Marcelo Dossa were bound for Austin, Tex., after a week’s visit to New York. Their American Airlines flight had been scratched, but they went to the airport on the chance that something else might turn up. “We decided to come anyway because we need to find a way to get home,” Mrs. Dossa said.

Amid the whiteout conditions outside, many homes went dark. Consolidated Edison reported more than 560 power outages in New York City, the vast majority in Queens and not expected to be fixed until Monday evening. Nearly 10,400 customers on Long Island lost service from the Long Island Power Authority, and more than 1,500 people were without power in New Jersey. About 4,900 lost electricity in Connecticut, mostly along the coast.

People who ventured out in cars found major roads plowed but slippery; the police reported many spinouts and minor accidents on Sunday. Many bus carriers canceled service between Washington and Boston, where the New England Aquarium bubble-wrapped its four 5-foot penguin ice sculptures to protect them from the elements.

In Philadelphia, where 20 inches of snow was expected, the National Football League postponed the Eagles-Vikings game from Sunday night to Tuesday night. League officials said the last time a forecast of heavy snow changed a scheduled outdoor game was in 1932, when the league championship game between the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans was moved indoors.

The Washington area, which had a series of rare snowstorms last winter, was largely spared by this one, an enclave of serenity in the crocodile-shaped mass that crawled up the Atlantic Coast. The weather service, which had predicted 6 to 10 inches of snow for the capital region, scaled it back at midday to 1 to 2 inches, and Ronald Reagan and Dulles International Airports remained open with normal service.

For retailers, who had enjoyed a big run-up to the holiday, there was a chill in the day-after-Christmas sales, traditionally one of the year’s biggest shopping days. In Brooklyn, the Atlantic Terminal Mall had only a smattering of customers, not the usual day-after frenzy.

Rebecca Godfrey, 28, a manager at Dead Sea Spa skin care kiosk, said that in 40 minutes only three people stopped in, and only one made a purchase. On the same day last year, she said, 40 to 50 visited, and half bought products. “Usually the day after Christmas is like my favorite day to work,” Ms. Godfrey said. “But today I just felt like being home.”

At the Doubletree Hotel in Times Square, three generations of the stranded Braceras family from Miami — 11 members in all — were sprawled in the lobby with suitcases, and dwindling options. They should have been on the ski slopes of Vermont, starting a weeklong vacation. But their connecting flight had been canceled, and hopes for a car service had been dashed.

At least they had a room upstairs. Sue Braceras, the matriarch, presided as her brood talked of an impromptu sightseeing tour, perhaps with stops at Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes, and to the American Girl shop on Fifth Avenue. But it was all doubtful.

“We’re going to have a ball,” Elizabeth Campo, one of the adult daughters, said through gritted teeth as five children scampered among the suitcases. “My husband went to the room already with the baby. He said he’s not leaving the room for two days.”

Reporting was contributed by Al Baker, Judy Battista,

Michael M. Grynbaum, Angela Macropoulos,

Liz Robbins, Noah Rosenberg and Sarah Wheaton.

Huge Blizzard Snarls Travel and Transit in the Northeast,
NYT, 26.12.2010,
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/
nyregion/28blizzard.html

Clearing Roads in Winter

Requires Snowphistication

February 16, 2010
Filed at 6:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO (AP) -- The forecast: a mighty winter blizzard sure to dump a record-setting blanket of snow that will grow from inches to feet overnight, just in time for rush hour.

When it happened this month in Washington, they called it ''Snowpocalypse'' and an overwhelmed city couldn't keep its streets clear. When it happened last week in Chicago, they called it ''Tuesday'' and kept the blacktop black from first flakes to final drifts.

''I'd take my plow drivers and put them up against anyone in North America,'' said Bobby Richardson, Chicago's snow removal boss. ''Ten inches, a foot of snow? That's nothing for us. Nothing.''

That's not the case outside of Chicago and other cities in the American snow belt, where the strategy for cleaning the streets of winter's wrath is often based on a calculated risk that snow won't fall where snow usually doesn't. Most years, that gamble pays off. But this winter, historic blizzards have struck cities where traffic-snarling snowfalls are rare or even unheard of, exposing the dangers of counting on the Big One not to hit.

''You won't see bare pavement for at least three weeks -- and that's if we don't get another snow next week,'' Steve Shannon, an operations manager at the Virginia Department of Transportation, said late last week about suburban Washington's Fairfax County.

To be fair, the one-two punch of storms that socked the East Coast this month were record-setting, with snow falling so fast and deep Washington pulled its plows from the road. A quarter were knocked out of commission entirely by the struggle of trying to move so much snow off the streets.

And yet Richardson and his legendary snow-clearing legions argue that keeping a city moving during such a blizzard isn't an insurmountable task. Should as much snow fall on Chicago as it did in Washington this month, more than 500 plows and 1,000 workers -- hardened by years of work in tough Midwestern winters -- are prepared to wipe it all away.

''Chicago would get through such a storm, and while it would not be total normalcy, the city would still function,'' said Matt Smith, a spokesman for the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation.

Buried by snow this month, cities across the Mid-Atlantic states were forced to scramble to locate plows, hiring hundreds from private contractors and seeking help from neighboring states. No place seemed more unprepared for the weather than the Washington area: The federal government shut down for days as District residents complained of a spotty, haphazard response that left some streets all but abandoned.

And in the South, where even a light dusting is enough to paralyze commuters until the weather warms up and melts away the problem, most major cities have only a handful of plows -- if any at all. In Dallas, a city of 1.2 million people but not a single dedicated snow plow, authorities count on snowflakes melting the minute they touch the ground.

That didn't happen last week, when the worst storm in nearly five decades dropped more than a foot of snow in northern Texas. All the city could do was send reconnaissance teams to identify slick spots and direct trucks to spread sand.

''Historically, that has handled every situation we face,'' city spokesman Frank Librio said.

So, which city is best at cleaning up after the Big One? Chicago, Buffalo, N.Y., or some other snowy locale? Those who study the business of providing such services say looking at comparable data is the only way to credibly assess whether one snow removal strategy beats another. But not only does such information not exist, the hundreds of variables involved complicate any effort to devise a master strategy.

For example, St. Paul, Minn., is far hillier than its Twin Cities counterpart of Minneapolis, which is filled with more alleys and more cars -- obstacles plows must dodge. Each snowfall is different, too: light, powdery snow falls when the temperatures drop close to zero, and wet, heavy snow comes when the temperature hovers around freezing.

''The snow and ice community has struggled with this topic for years as the methods, equipment, availability of resources and most importantly, level of service and winter severity, vary enormously from state to state, region to region,'' said Caleb Dobbins, a state maintenance engineer at the New Hampshire Department of Transportation.

What can be measured is preparation. With an annual average snowfall of 38 inches, Chicago maintains a fleet of 300 trucks specifically designed for removing snow, 200 others that can be fitted with plow blades and budgeted $17 million for the work this winter. Washington, with an average of 19.4 inches of snow each year, has 200 trucks that can be fitted with blades and a snow budget of $6 million.

Some Washington residents say the district is in a no-win situation: slammed for not being prepared when the Big One hits, but likely to face criticism if it spent much more on snow removal.

''I don't know how prudent it would be to throw millions of taxpayer dollars at a problem that may not rear its head in a century,'' said Mike DeBonis, a columnist for the Washington City Paper.

If the already cash-strapped city wanted to spend more on snow, he added, it would be forced to cut other, arguably higher priority services, such as garbage collection or tree trimming.

Head farther South and the preparation naturally gets even thinner. In Pensacola, Fla., there is no budget for snow removal. The city has a fertilizer spreader that can work with sand, but no snow-clearing master plan that in snowbelt cities typically includes target times for clearing streets.

''If we knew a cold front was coming in, I'd have to go to a pool company and buy some sodium chloride,'' said Pensacola public works director Al Garza. ''Every time we take precautions, (we) stockpile some masonry sands in different locations and end up not using it.''

Then comes a month like February, when snow covers some ground in 49 states; two-thirds of the nation's land mass had snow cover Friday. While Garza was safe, snow fell just 40 miles north of Pensacola last week. After brief respite over the weekend, it was snowing again in Washington on Monday.

The consequences of failing to clear that snow can be deadly. Each year, more than 1,300 people are killed and more than 116,000 injured in vehicle crashes on snowy, slushy or icy pavement, according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administration. A storm that shuts down roads also closes the door of business, costing communities hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales taxes and revenue from income taxes.

''The benefits of being better prepared far outweigh the costs -- because it costs so much when the Big One does hit,'' said Greg Cohen, executive director of the Roadway Safety Foundation, whose own street in Washington was still unplowed several days after the storms hit.

Then there's the politics of snow: Mayors know failure to remove it can cost them their jobs.

Every mayor knows the story of Chicago's Michael Bilandic, the incumbent who lost in the 1979 Democratic primary after the city failed to clear streets fast enough after a storm. These days, voters embrace Mayor Richard M. Daley in part because the crews at Streets and Sanitation keeps the city in business every winter: The city's public schools haven't had a ''snow day'' in more than a decade.

''I got more calls from mayors during snow storms than at any other time,'' said Tom Eggum, a retired public works director in St. Paul. ''It's probably because of what happened in Chicago.''

While nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population lives in an area that gets some snow each year, there's a consensus Chicago gets rid of it as well as any place else. The city received an A grade for clearing its main streets from the Illinois Policy Institute following last week's storm, which broke the single-day snowfall record for February by dropping more than a foot of snow on the city.

A cool confidence flows through Richardson's downtown snow command center, where the city's deputy streets commissioner sleeps on a cot so he can work around the clock during a storm. He oversees a dozen dispatchers who comb through satellite data, watch giant screens showing up to 1,000 live camera shots of major streets, and call plow drivers to let them know they've missed a spot or need to drop their blade a little lower.

The drivers at the other end of a dispatcher's call are often under the most pressure, intently focused for 12 or more hours at a time on the road ahead, anxious about clipping curbs, cars or even pedestrians as they clear Chicago's 9,500 miles of street lanes. They're helped by a merciless towing operation that clears illegally parked cars to make room for the plows.

Cohen, the Roadway Safety Foundation chief, said Washington and other cities ill-prepared for snow should heed the lessons of this February winter and start preparing for the next Big One by building up that kind of snow-fighting force. But he doesn't have faith it will happen: As voters, people might remember street-clearing failures, but as taxpayers, they tend to forget as soon as the snow melts.

''People say it should be done,'' he said. ''But then no one connects the dots that someone has to pay for it.''

------

Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko

and Sarah Karush in Washington,

Jeff Karoub in Detroit, Briana Bierschbach

in St. Paul, Minn.,

Linda Steward Ball in Dallas,

Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y.,

and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis.,

contributed to this report.

Clearing Roads in Winter Requires Snowphistication, NYT, 16.2.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/16/us/
AP-US-Winter-Weather-Clearing-the-Streets.html

Big Chill:

Blast of Arctic Air Stuns Eastern US

January 17, 2009
Filed at 4:43 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Alabama briefly turned colder than Alaska, water fountains froze into ice sculptures in South Carolina and Florida shivered through its brush with the Arctic air blast that deadened car batteries in the Northeast and prompted scattered Midwest power outages.

As Southerners awaited an expected weekend thaw, the Northeast persisted under the bitterly cold air from Canada that sent temperatures plunging in some places below minus 30 degrees Friday and left even longtime residents reluctant to venture outdoors.

Quentin Masters braved the Big Chill, making a trip to a Syracuse, N.Y., post office to mail his sister a gift for her birthday Monday.

''It was almost too cold to come down,'' he said, but he added, ''I don't want to be late.''

Single-digit temperatures and subzero wind chills were expected in western New York through the weekend, with more seasonable conditions moving in early next week.

To Southerners, who rarely see temperatures so cold, the icebox-like weather was the most jarring. Construction worker Allen Johnson wore a gray beanie, flannel shirt, long johns and boots as he stopped for coffee in Montgomery, Ala., after an overnight low of 22 degrees Friday.

''No matter how bad it is, it could be worse -- we could be in Anchorage, Alaska,'' Johnson said. Actually, the temperature was about 20 degrees warmer in Anchorage for a while Friday.

Freezing temperatures threatened to kill picturesque Spanish moss hanging from Gulf Coast trees. In Spartanburg, S.C., a hard freeze coated a water fountain in shimmering icicles. And it was too cold to bet on dogs in West Virginia, ditto for Tennessee.

Heather Davis, of NashvillePAW Magazine, was watching as her photographer unsuccessfully tried to coax their cover model, a white poodle named Cotton, to pose outdoors for the animal publication in that city in Tennessee. Cotton, who is up for adoption, ran to the car and didn't want to leave.

''I don't think I realized how cold it was,'' Davis said, laughing.

But gusting winds were no laughing matter in Ohio, where temperatures pushed to their lowest this winter and forced scattered power outages. Lows ranged from minus 6 degrees in Cincinnati to minus 14 degrees in Dayton and Toledo -- just missing record lows for Friday's date.

Thousands in Ohio and Illinois lost power for several hours while Charleston, W.Va.-based Appalachian Power, which delivers electricity to more than 1 million customers Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, had record electricity demand as businesses and homes cranked up the heat.

In Columbus, Ohio, 45-year-old Brandon Champney beat the cold by visiting the orchid exhibit at the Franklin Park Conservatory -- a deliciously climate-controlled 72 degrees.

''It's beautiful, warm, great,'' Champney said.

The cold claimed at least six lives since Friday and contributed to dozens of traffic accidents. One death involved a man in a wheelchair who was found in subzero temperatures stuck in the snow, a shovel in his hand, outside his home in Des Moines, Iowa.

In central Pennsylvania, AAA fielded a spike in calls from motorists whose batteries went dead or door locks froze shut. Wind chills were as low as 25 degrees below zero in greater Pittsburgh.

In Michigan, a winter storm watch was in effect for parts of the Lower Peninsula, where up to 8 inches of snow could fall by Sunday morning, the weather service said.

And in Illinois, where a low of 32 degrees below zero was recorded in a north-central area Friday, the weather service predicted only modest weekend relief -- sort of. The mercury was expected to head Saturday into the 20s in northern Illinois and the 30s in southern Illinois.

''The heat wave begins,'' meteorologist Tim Halbach quipped.

------

Associated Press writers William Kates in Syracuse,

Kristin M. Hall in Nashville, Tenn.,

and David Mercer in Champaign, Ill.,

contributed to this report.

Big Chill: Blast of Arctic Air Stuns Eastern US,
NYT,
17.1.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/01/17/us/AP-Winter-Weather.html

Winter Storms Hit Northern U.S.

February 1, 2008
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

Snow, sleet and freezing rain pelted the northern Midwest and northeastern states Friday, closing the Buffalo airport and causing travel delays around the region. Hundreds of flights were canceled Thursday at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and Friday started with arrival delays averaging two and a half hours, according to federal aviation officials.

As much as a foot of snow was expected by late Friday in the Chicago area and in southern Michigan, and snow covering roadways was expected to snarl traffic during the morning and evening rush hours. Dozens of school districts in Michigan were closed because of treacherous road conditions.

The storm was expected to move northeast during the day, with the snow changing to freezing rain and ice in northern Pennsylvania and New York and possibly accumulating on tree limbs and power lines, dragging them down. Forecasters said that as much as a half an inch of ice could accumulate on exposed surfaces. Winds gusting up to 40 miles per hour over much of the Northeast could add to the damage.

The icy conditions were expected to move into northern New England overnight with similar accumulations in places like Burlington, Vermont.

Freezing rain also fell in western Virginia and North Carolina along the Interstate 81 corridor.

Accumulating snow and ice forced authorities to close Buffalo Niagara airport at 6:30 a.m. on Friday. It reopened late in the morning. Poor weather conditions slowed operations at the New York area’s La Guardia and Newark airports, with arrival delays averaging about two hours by late morning. Delays at Philadelphia’s airport were averaging slightly more than an hour.

As much as two inches of rain was expected to fall along the coastal region stretching from Philadelphia to Boston.

Blowing snow in northern Texas resulted in whiteout conditions that caused a 40-vehicle chain reaction collision on Interstate 40 that killed one person, according to The Associate Press. A total of four deaths were attributed to the storm.

In the far west, heavy snows and the threat of avalanches prompted authorities to close highways and declare states of emergency, as they struggled to clear away the heavy accumulations.

Winter Storms Hit Northern U.S., NYT, 1.2.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/us/01cnd-storm.html

Snow, Cold, Storms

Pound the Midwest

January 30, 2008
Filed at 8:40 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO (AP) -- Severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and fierce winds sliced through the Midwest and took aim at the Northeast early Wednesday, leaving behind bitterly cold air and blizzards in the northern Plains that sent temperatures in some areas plummeting by 50 degrees in a few hours.

The bad weather reached upstate New York by early Wednesday and forecasters warned that the arctic blast would send mercury tumbling across the Northeast and New England.

''This is going to be a hard, vicious slap in the face from Mother Nature,'' Gino Izzi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Romeoville, Ill., said Tuesday night. ''The temperature drop we saw was really spectacular in a bad way.''

The temperature in Buffalo, N.Y., went from a high of 54 degrees Tuesday to 21 degrees by 7 a.m. Wednesday, with winds gusting to more than 60 mph. Power was out in 40,000 homes and businesses, roads were slick and most schools in the Buffalo area were closed.

In northern Illinois, high winds downed power lines and knocked trees onto utility lines, causing nearly 14,000 customers to lose power overnight, mostly in Chicago's south suburbs, said ComEd spokeswoman Judy Rader. Service to all but 1,300 had been restored by Wednesday morning.

Thousands also were without power in Ohio and Illinois. In Michigan, Lower Peninsula residents were in the dark as blizzard conditions hit the western and northern parts of the state.

The winds and thunderstorms may have killed two people in Indiana on Tuesday, authorities said. Firefighters in southwestern Indiana pulled two bodies from a mobile home near Evansville that had been turned on its side by winds in a thunderstorm, WEHT-TV reported.

Wind gusts as high as 70 mph created problems for air travel and avalanche warnings were issued for some Western regions. Tornadoes or reports of tornadoes surfaced in several communities in the nation's midsection.

''I wouldn't call it a common occurrence to see winds this strong with this kind of snow,'' Izzi said. ''This isn't something we see every year.''

The system also dragged frigid air across the northern Plains. The Weather Service reported midday temperature Tuesday of minus-24 degrees at Glasgow, Mont. North Dakota registered wind chill factors of minus-54 degrees at Garrison, while Williston hit a low of minus-24 degrees.

Most of Minnesota was under wind chill warnings until noon Wednesday due to indexes that fell into the minus-30 degree level. It was as low as 50 degrees below freezing in Hibbing.

Though only light snow fell in western, central and eastern Iowa on Tuesday, winds snapping as fast as 60 mph caused visibility problems, and temperatures dropped into single digits.

''It's a little worse than your average snowstorm,'' said Rod Donovan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Des Moines, Iowa.

Some 1,500 workers went home early from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., while critical medical staff were put up in hotels so they could stay close to serve patients. The blustery winds also put flight operations on ice at the Rochester airport.

In Cape Girardeau County, Mo., winds were as strong as 70 mph and dime-size hail fell. Two unconfirmed funnel clouds were reported, said Dick Knaup, the county's emergency management director.

The weather week began with heavy snow pummeling mountain areas from Washington state to northern Arizona as two storms converged, one from hard-hit California and another from the Gulf of Alaska, meteorologists said.

The storms were followed Tuesday by a third that threatened to leave up to 20 inches of snow in Idaho's mountains, said Jay Breidenbach of the Weather Service office in Boise, Idaho.

A fourth storm was on the way to the interior West: ''By Thursday, the next storm will be right on our doorstep. This is quite a storm system,'' Breidenbach said.

In the snow farther west, avalanche danger forced officials to close Interstate 90 at Snoqualmie Pass, Washington state's main east-west artery across the Cascade Mountains. The pass was to remain closed until Wednesday morning, Meagan McFadden of the state Department of Transportation said.

More than 200 trucks were backed up at North Bend, waiting to move freight across the pass. On a typical weekday, as many as 7,000 trucks travel I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass, she said.

Snow also closed highways in Minnesota, Colorado and Wyoming.

Two of three snowmobilers lost in the mountains west of Denver were found late Tuesday, said Summit County sheriff's spokeswoman Paulette Horr. The third was still missing.

In Oregon, two snowmobilers were rescued Monday after spending two nights in the Wallowa Mountains, where they were trapped by storms. Authorities said the two were dressed warmly and equipped with survival gear, matches and an avalanche beacon.

------

Associated Press writers P. Solomon Banda in Denver; Sophia Tareen and Michael Tarm in Chicago; Henry C. Jackson in Des Moines, Iowa; Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho; and Arthur H. Rotstein in Tucson, Ariz., contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

Weather Service warnings: http://www.weather.gov/view/nationalwarnings.php