Boston - Gusty winds and falling temperatures have plunged the northeastern United States into a deep freeze, as a fierce winter storm on Saturday dropped more than two feet (60 cm) of snow on some areas while packing high winds, prompting thousands of flight cancellations and leading governors in Rhode Island and other states to curtail access to the roads.
Dangerous wind chills were expected to fall below zero across the region on Sunday after the storm dumped snow from Virginia to Maine. Philadelphia and New York had plenty of snow, but Massachusetts bore the brunt of the storm, with the town of Sharon getting more than 30 inches (76 centimeters) of snow before the storm moved out.
The wind continued raging as over 100,000 lost power, mostly in Massachusetts, hampering crews’ ability to work on overhead lines. No other states reported widespread outages.
Winds gusted as high as 83 mph (134 kph) on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. It scoured the ground bare in some spots and piled the snow into huge drifts in others. Coastal towns flooded, with wind and waves battering North Weymouth, south of Boston, flooding streets with a slurry of frigid water, according to video posted on social media. Other videos showed a street underwater on Nantucket and waves crashing against the windows of a building in Plymouth.
Nearly 11 million people along the East Coast remained under blizzard warnings from the Nor'easter, according to the National Weather Service, including the Boston metropolitan area, which was forecast to be hit with up to 25 inches (64 cm) of snow. The storm blanketed a large swath of New England with snow.
New York City experienced a heavy snowfall while Long Island, New York braced for up to two feet of snow. With the storm ongoing, some coastal areas of New Jersey also recorded 15 inches (38 cm).
Most Boston area residents heeded warnings to stay indoors as snow, whipped by wind gusts forecast by the National Weather Service to reach 43 miles (69 km) per hour, continued to fall in small, dense flakes on Saturday afternoon, challenging the hundreds of plows out making an effort to stay ahead of the storm.
Coastal areas across Massachusetts were being hit especially hard, including some flooding along the shoreline, as the center of the storm hovered just east of the Cape Cod resort area by Saturday mid-afternoon.
Climate change strengthens storm
Climate change, particularly the warming ocean, probably influenced the strength of the storm, atmospheric researchers said.
Much warmer ocean waters “are certainly playing a role in the strengthening of the storm system and increased moisture available for the storm,” said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado. “But it isn’t the only thing.”
The storm had two saving graces: Dry snow less capable of snapping trees and tearing down power lines, and its timing on a weekend, when schools were closed and few people were commuting.
The National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed on Saturday that the storm had undergone bombogenesis, meaning that colder air mixed with warmer sea air, leading to a swift drop in atmospheric pressure. The process leads to a so-called bomb cyclone.
-Reuters/AP/BBC