SILVER SPRING, Md. – A blizzard with hurricane-force winds brought much of the East Coast to a standstill Saturday, dumping as much as 3 feet of snow, stranding tens of thousands of travelers and shutting down the nation’s capital and its largest city.
After days of weather warnings, many of the 80 million people in the storm’s path heeded requests to stay home and off the roads, which were largely deserted. But more was yet to come, with dangerous conditions expected to persist until early Sunday.
In addition to heavy snow and treacherous winds, the National Weather Service predicted up to half an inch of ice for the Carolinas and potentially serious coastal flooding for the mid-Atlantic region.
“This is going to be one of those generational events, where your parents talk about how bad it was,” said Ryan Maue, meteorologist for WeatherBell Analytics, from Tallahassee, Florida, which also saw some flakes.
At least 18 deaths were blamed on the weather, most from traffic accidents.
The system was mammoth, dropping snow from the Gulf Coast to New England. By early afternoon, areas near Washington had surpassed 30 inches, according to the weather service’s running totals. The heaviest amount was in Berkeley County, West Virginia, with 33 inches.
The long-anticipated storm exceeded expectations, so forecasters increased their snow predictions for New York and points north.
The new estimates were for heavy snow all the way up to just south of Boston, forecaster Patrick Burke said from at the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
Eighteen to 24 inches were predicted for Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia; 24 to 30 inches for areas just north and west of Interstate 95 outside those two cities; and 15 to 20 inches for New York, Burke said.
“This is kind of a top 10 snowstorm,” said weather service winter storm expert Paul Kocin, who co-wrote a two-volume textbook about blizzards. And for New York and Washington, this looks like top 5, he said. “It’s a big one.”
In Washington, monuments that would normally be busy with tourists were mostly vacant. The steps of the Lincoln Memorial had not been cleared off and looked almost like a ski slope.
At the Korean War Veterans Memorial, statues of soldiers were coated with snow. And at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, snow settled on King’s statue, covering one of his shoulders and the tops of his folded arms.
Visibility was sharply reduced. On an average day, visitors can see from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument and the Capitol. But on Saturday, the Washington Monument was not even visible from the memorial to the 16th president.
All mass transit in the capital was to be shut down through Sunday.
By midday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a travel ban in New York City, ordering all nonemergency vehicles off the roads. Mayor Bill de Blasio urged Broadway theaters and restaurants to close. The city’s commuter rails and above-ground segments of the subway were to shut down too, along with buses.
Without a bus, home health aide Elijah Scarboro couldn’t get to his next client, an 89-year-old man with Alzheimer’s.
“I’m really concerned,” he said. “But I think he’ll be fine. He’s with his wife. I wish I could get there but I can’t.”
Cab driver Mian Ayyub said he tried to pick up fares Saturday morning but gave up after getting stuck four times in two hours. Police and passers-by helped get him free.
“I’ve been driving a cab 28 years, but this looks like the worst.” He parked in the East Village and went home.
A miles-long backup of vehicles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in western Pennsylvania included a church group from Indiana.
Father Shaun Whittington said he and his 96 parishioners, mostly teenagers, were on their way home Friday evening from the March for Life in Washington when the turnpike turned into a snowy parking lot.
They had enough gas to keep the buses running and enough DVDs to keep the kids entertained until nearly noon Saturday, when plows finally arrived, Whittington said.
“We’re on a pilgrimage,” he said. “There’s going to be suffering with that.”
Hundreds of drivers were also stranded overnight in Kentucky on a long stretch of Interstate 75 south of Lexington because of a string of crashes and blowing snow. Crews passed out snacks, fuel and water and tried to move cars one by one.
The snow alone would have been enough to bring the East Coast to a halt. But it was whipped into a maelstrom by winds that reached 75 mph at Dewey Beach, Delaware, and Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, according to the weather service.
From Virginia to New York, sustained winds topped 30 mph and gusted to around 50 mph, Burke said.
The wind was so strong that scientists reported trouble measuring the snowfall.
And if that weren’t enough, the storm also had bursts of thunder and lightning. Forecasters saw lightning out the window of the Weather Prediction Center, where meteorologists were camped out.
The ice and snow canceled nearly 4,300 flights. Airlines hoped to be back in business by Sunday afternoon.
Not so unhappy to be stranded were passengers on a cruise ship that was supposed to return to the port of Baltimore from the Bahamas on Sunday. Their arrival has been delayed until at least Monday.
The snowstorm was greeted happily at Virginia’s ski resorts.
Hank Thiess, general manager at Wintergreen ski resort in central Virginia, said he expected “to have just a terrific second half of the ski season.”
He was expecting 40 inches of dry, powdery snow, perfect for skiing.
“We’re going to have a packed snow surface,” he said, “that will just be outstanding.”
‘Sleeping in your car on the interstate’
LEXINGTON, Ky. – What was supposed to be a relaxing weekend in Tennessee for Alexx and Kate Bragg turned into a grueling night of frozen gridlock along one of the country’s busiest interstate highways.
Hundreds of drivers were stuck on I-75 overnight after a massive winter storm dumped more than a foot of snow in south central Kentucky, clogging cars and causing multiple crashes that created a 30-mile stretch of shivering passengers.
By Saturday afternoon, I-75 was no longer closed, with lanes open both northbound and southbound. Traffic was moving – albeit slowly, and officials expected it to stay that way for a while. State police Trooper Lloyd Cochran said he couldn’t give a figure for the number of cars or people affected by the standstill but said no injuries were reported.
Kate Bragg was one of the stuck motorists, spending most of the night at mile marker 59 between Livingston and Mount Vernon. She and her husband, Alexx, are from Indiana and were on their way to Tennessee for a getaway weekend when they got stuck.
For hours, the only people they saw were salt truck drivers begging motorists to move over so they could exit, refuel and hopefully help clear the roads. At one point, Alexx Bragg tucked in behind a salt truck and followed it on the shoulder, only to get stuck again.
“We are worried because we are from Indiana, have no concept of where we are and no idea when to anticipate getting out,” Bragg told The Associated Press in an electronic message using Twitter.
Kentucky officials set up shelters for stranded motorists at churches and public schools along the Interstate, but the Braggs were too far away and could not make it to them.
“Emotional breaking point coupled with exhaustion has been met,” Kate Bragg tweeted after 11 p.m., after about eight hours on the highway, later adding: “Sleeping on the interstate ... Don’t they normally caution against this?”
Kate Bragg posted on Twitter that the couple finally got off the interstate at about 2:30 a.m., using online mapping services to find a way around the clogged interstate using side roads that had been plowed.
Traffic was slowly moving Saturday along the 30-mile stretch from Berea to London, said to Buddy Rogers, spokesman for Kentucky Emergency Management. All local hotels were booked, Cochran said. He described people still stuck on the road, some milling about at exits or leaving their cars to seek out the few stores and restaurants nearby.
About 65 people had taken shelter at the West London Baptist Church Saturday morning, according to Amanda Shotton, disaster program manager for the American Red Cross in Kentucky. She said local grocery stores and restaurants provided food for firefighters to take to stranded motorists who couldn’t reach shelter.
Mariclare Lafferty and her family were on their way home to Hamburg, New York, when they stopped at a hotel in Knoxville to avoid the storm. But they had no heat after their hotel lost power, so they got back on the interstate, only to get stuck for five hours.
“I was very scared, very nervous,” she said. “They don’t plow their roads in Kentucky. We’re from Buffalo, and we’re used to a plow going down the road every 20 minutes. We’re just not used to this here.”
Lafferty said she and her family have been at the West London Baptist Church shelter since about 2 a.m. and plan to stay there for most of the day.
“They’re treating us very well, but we’re very tired,” she said.
This is the second time in less than a year Kentucky drivers have seen major delays because of snow. Last March, thousands of drivers were stuck on I-65 in western Kentucky, some for up to 24 hours, after two feet of snow fell over several days.
Storm by state
DELAWARE
Firefighters helped about a dozen people Saturday evacuate Oak Orchard, a low-lying community in southern Delaware that often floods during storms. Part of Route 1, a costal artery, was closed because of sand and water. Officials reported numerous dune breaches along the coast and significant flooding of low-lying communities around Delaware’s inland bays. More than 5,000 homes and businesses lost power.
GEORGIA
Utilities had restored power to more than 66,000 customers since the storm began there early Friday, though a few thousand more were still without service, a Georgia Power spokesman said.
KENTUCKY
Motorists got stuck overnight Friday on Interstate 75 south of Lexington as wrecks and blowing snow brought traffic to a halt. Officials went from vehicle to vehicle, checking on marooned drivers; distributing water, fuel and snacks; and helping people get to shelters set up at churches and public schools along the highway. But some drivers said they were too far away to make it to the shelters. The road reopened early Saturday.
Elsewhere, a transportation worker died while plowing snow-covered highways near Bowling Green early Saturday, and a man died when his car collided with a salt truck on a southeastern Kentucky road Thursday, state police said.
MAINE
Snow pros in the Bangor Police Department offered advice, both practical and humorous, to points south, instructing the snowbound to keep generators gassed up – but outside. Running a generator inside can result in deadly carbon monoxide filling the house. The department noted that people do try this but “usually only one time.” The Facebook posted added, “The men and women of the Bangor Police Department are rooting for you. You got this.”
MARYLAND
A 60-year-old man shoveling snow in the Fort Washington area died after an apparent heart attack, Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department spokesman Mark Brady said. The death came shortly after the department issued an advisory suggesting that people over 50 and those with heart conditions to get someone else to shovel for them. At least 2,000 homes and businesses statewide lost power.
NEW JERSEY
A string of seaside resort towns were temporarily isolated by flood waters when the tide rushed in Saturday, officials said. No injuries were immediately reported in the coastal towns, which some residents had voluntarily evacuated, Cape May County spokeswoman Diane Wieland said. More than 90,000 homes and businesses lost power. Gov. Chris Christie said he saw some plows that had come to a stop because they were blocked by cars that got stuck in the snow on highways.
NEW YORK
Broadway shows were abruptly canceled and drivers were ordered to stay off New York City roads and Long Island highways. Above-ground subway lines, city buses and many commuter trains were also affected as the storm proved worse than expected in the nation’s biggest city. Hudson River crossings including the George Washington Bridge and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels were closed to regular traffic. Police said they had responded to more than 200 car accidents and 300 disabled vehicles citywide.
NORTH CAROLINA
Five people, including a 4-year-old boy, were killed in wrecks amid the storm, authorities said. And a man was arrested on charges of killing a motorist who stopped to help after the suspect’s car slid off an ice-covered road outside Charlotte.
The 27-year-old became agitated and started shooting after a passing truck with three men stopped to help around nightfall Friday, local media reported. He was being held Saturday for a court appearance Monday. Jail records listed no defense attorney who could comment on the charges. About 150,000 homes and businesses lost power.
OHIO
Hocking College, a small institution in Nelsonville, canceled classes and events.
PENNSYLVANIA
Many travelers – including teams of college athletes and a church group – got stuck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the western part of the state. The Temple University women’s gymnastics team and the Duquesne University’s men’s basketball team were stuck in their buses for hours, as was a church group of 96 mostly teenage parishioners home to Indiana from the March for Life in Washington. The National Guard was called out to provide food, water, tire chains and shovels, and emergency workers on all-terrain vehicles checked on stranded motorists.
Officials closed a 90-mile stretch of the roadway to allow maintenance workers to focus on those who were stuck.
TENNESSEE
Two people were killed as cars slid off icy roads in Tennessee. One vehicle plummeted down a 300-foot embankment Wednesday night, killing the driver, whose husband survived and climbed up over several hours to report the wreck.
Nashville saw its heaviest snowfall in nearly 20 years as the storm caused gridlock on streets and highways in Middle Tennessee. Eight inches of snow fell at Nashville International Airport, the most since Nashville logged 8.7 inches of snow on March 19, 1996, National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Rose said.
VIRGINIA
A driver was killed in Chesapeake Friday after his car veered off a snowy highway and hit a tree, police said. Statewide, police grappled with over 1,000 car crashes and more than 1,000 disabled vehicles as snow piled up Friday and Saturday. A theater on the National Register of Historic Places was badly damaged by the weather, a county official said. Donk’s Theater opened in 1947 and was known as “Home of Virginia’s Lil’ Ole Opry.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mass transit was shut down in the nation’s capital, where the federal government had closed its offices at noon Friday. Monuments normally busy with tourists were largely deserted as snow made the steps of the Lincoln Memorial look almost like a short ski slope.
President Barack Obama, hunkered down at the White House, was one of many who stayed home. But a video of one of the Smithsonian National Zoo’s four pandas enjoying the snow there Saturday was a bright spot amid the storm clouds, drawing 1.7 million views on Facebook.
WEST VIRGINIA
As many as 200 vehicles, most of them tractor-trailers, were stranded overnight Friday on Interstate 77 north of Charleston, said C.W. Sigman of the Kanawha County Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. The logjam was cleared by noon Saturday, with a fleet of wreckers pulled out stuck vehicles.
Roman Catholics were relieved of their obligation to attend Mass because of the snowstorm, as Bishop Michael J. Bransfield encouraged prayers for those in the path of the storm.
