Snow is piling up for 24 hours and we are expecting more snow for at least 12 more hours.
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New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said today would be a major clean-up day.
But when he looked outside, he saw none.
“The forecasts suggest that the snow will wrap up late tonight or in the very early hours of the morning”, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a press conference.
“We just came back from some holidays in India so the weather is a hard adjustment”, said Justin Wilcox, 32, out taking selfies in the capital.
Roofs collapsed on a historic theater in Virginia and a horse barn in Maryland, while seaside towns in New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland grappled with flooding.
The next high tide, due at about 7 p.m. EST, is expected to be higher than usual because of the full moon. The storm will taper off by Sunday, it said.
“We’re on a pilgrimage”, he said. “I was trying to protect them, but they probably would have been better off just standing outside”.
After Sandy, sand dune walls were built to help keep water from flooding ashore. Public schools will also remain shut across much of the Washington and Baltimore area.
Along New Jersey and Delaware’s coastlines, Saturday’s storm caused ice-laden seawater to rush into the streets of beach towns. “Some areas I would say it’s thigh to waist deep”.
The Metro-North rail line, which serves suburbs north and east of New York City, was restored on Sunday afternoon and was operating on a Sunday schedule.
“We had a lot of evacuations, a lot of people who had stayed in their homes not anticipating this, needing to be rescued”, Rosenello said.
“There’s going to be major cleanup”.
Fifteen people died in Arkansas, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, while more than 200,000 people were left without power and 2,200 National Guard personnel were drafted in.
Dubbed “Snowzilla” – the snowstorm dumped 22.2 inches (56 centimetres) in Washington and 25.1 inches in New York’s Central Park, the third highest accumulation since records began in 1869.
After dumping almost 2 feet of snow on the Washington area overnight, the storm unexpectedly gathered strength as it spun northward and headed into the NY metropolitan area, home to about 20 million people.
“I’ve never seen snow like this”, said Luis Abraham Garcia, a doctoral student from Mexico City, as he trudged through sidewalks with his tall suitcase. The Weather Channel also reported Jonas is the largest snowstorm ever recorded in Pennsylvania and Baltimore, not to mention a whopping 40-inch snowfall in Glengarry, West Virginia. Washington-area airports remained closed Sunday after the punishing blizzard. Tian Tian, the giant panda, seemed to enjoy it. Thousands of motorists were stranded for hours on highways further south.
Road accidents Friday night caused a 7-mile-long backlog involving around 500 vehicles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a state police spokeswoman said.
The storm shut down NY and Washington DC for the weekend, affecting around eighty five million people.
Those conditions will help plows clear snow, according to CNN Meteorologist Jennifer Gray. While authorities in NY and New Jersey halted public transportation, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority took the rare step of suspending operations through Sunday in the capital. Strong winds and heavy snow that was forecast to produce “life-threatening blizzard conditions” was expected throughout Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
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A travel ban had been ordered by officials over the weekend to prevent nonemergency vehicles off the road in NY, including buses and parts of the subway that run above ground.
