Firefighters scrambled to rescue motorists from flooded streets in Boston, National Guard troops were mobilised in the Northeast, and New York City’s two main airports halted flights because of whiteout conditions, according to a report from the Reuters news agency on Thursday.
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The storm, as predicted, has been getting more powerful, a process called bombogenesis, which means its central pressure drops 24 millibars in 24 hours. The wintry weather has been blamed for at least 13 deaths in the past few days, including three fatalities in North Carolina traffic accidents and three in Texas due to cold.
The severe weather has led the Foreign Office to update its advice to United Kingdom travellers in, or heading to, the region.
A one-two punch of dangerously frigid temperatures and gusty winds will wallop parts of the Northeast and Midwest on Friday and Saturday after a major storm left piles of snow and thousands of power outages along the East Coast.
With the wind chill, it could feel as cold as 30 degrees below in those areas, a risky level that could potentially lead to frostbite exposure, warned Carl Erickson, an AccuWeather meteorologist based in State College, Pennsylvania.
Blizzard warnings were in effect along the east coast from North Carolina to Maine.
The city is expecting up to six inches of snow and will have 1,500 plows out across all five boroughs.
According to weather forecasters, people need to pay attention to the updates but there is no need to panic. Blizzard warnings have been issued for parts of Delaware; Virginia; Maryland; coastal New Jersey; Long Island, N.Y.; and coastal New England. The storm is caused by a rapid and sharp drop of barometric pressure known as “bombogenesis”, and is exceptionally rare.
“We are going to be ready for the storm”, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said. He added that the cold temperatures can also be deadly. But once the storm is gone, it will still leave high winds and cold temperatures in its wake.
Hurricane-strength winds pushed the ocean tides higher than normal, flooding other coastal communities, including Marshfield and in Hampton Beach, N.H.
Four people were killed in North and SC after their vehicles ran off snow-covered roads, authorities said.
A dreaded “bomb cyclone” is pounding the Northeast, dumping blinding snow hurled by wind gusts as strong as 60 miles per hour.
As the winter storm moved north along the coast, it was deepening rapidly. Power outages are likely and travel will be hard or impossible in some area, he said.
More than 70 percent of Newark’s flights and 90 percent of New York’s LaGuardia flights were also canceled.
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The GOES-16 satellite has been mapping lightning it finds throughout the bomb cyclone, too.
