Blizzard warnings reach as far north as Boston, New York City and Long Island, but the potential impact of the storm for those areas is still unclear. A transition from rain to sleet and freezing rain to snow are expected move across the mid-state throughout Friday. Philadelphia could receive nearly as much, and New York City might see 6 to 12 inches, Patrick Burke, a meteorologist with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in Maryland, said today.
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Delta Air Lines has cancelled all flights out of Charlotte, Raleigh, Lexington, Columbus, Greenville-Spartanburg, Piedmont Triad and Norfolk, and is expecting to cancel all flights out of the DC and NYC area by Friday morning.
In addition to the incredible snowfall projections-up to 30 inches in Washington, D.C., up to 24 inches in New York City-the National Weather Service is homing in on the risk of tornadoes in Louisiana, a significant ice storm in North Carolina, biting wind gusts to almost hurricane force, and coastal flooding on the scale of Hurricane Sandy in the Delmarva Peninsula and southern New Jersey.
The capital is at the center of an angry, sprawling winter storm that’s forecast to deliver heavy snowfall over at least 15 states beginning Friday afternoon and evening and continuing well into Sunday night.
Sgt. Joshua Church said a 60-year-old woman was driving her vehicle in Stokes County near her home around 5:45 p.m. Wednesday when she hit an “extremely icy” patch while driving down a hill.
Ahead of the storm’s arrival on the East Coast, airlines have canceled more than 4,600 flights, and anticipated troubles at regional airports are resulting in flight delays and cancellations elsewhere in the country.
A weather system is expected to move into the area late Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. “I say they should shut things down”.
In Virginia, Gov. Terry McAuliffe issued a state of emergency, warning of travel disruptions and power outages and saying people should “take the threat of this storm seriously”.
One major event in Washington was still on: the March for Life, an annual anti-abortion rally that’s usually one of the largest events on the National Mall.
“We’re bracing for the first big storm of the winter”.
It turns out, despite attempts to formally name winter storms, there is not an official name for the storm that might drop 2 feet of snow in parts of West Virginia and Maryland. Church said Mary Williams lost control of her auto, which went down an embankment and turned over in a creek. “You put all the ingredients together, you can get a storm like this and it’s happening in real time”, he said. By Sunday afternoon, however, the airlines hope to be back to full schedule. About 1,000 track workers will be deployed to keep New York City’s subway system moving, and 79 trains will have “scraper shoes” to reduce icing on the rails, the Metropolitan Transit Authority said.
All major airlines have issued waivers for the weekend, allowing passengers to rebook onto earlier or later flights to avoid the storms.
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Just a month ago on Christmas Eve, the NWS reported that temperatures in New York’s iconic Central Park peaked at 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 Celsius), the warmest ever for the day since records began in 1871.
