Light snow fell across the Northeast Wednesday as people traveled to work and school after major storms that dropped powder on streets and sidewalks from Maryland to Maine.
An additional 2.5 to 7.6 centimeters (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) of snow was expected to fall, much less than in previous storms, but there was a possibility that melted snow could refreeze overnight, creating patchy black ice and creating slippery roads, the National Weather Service said. In some areas, much of it turned into slush as temperatures rose by mid-morning.
This week’s massive snowstorm has cities working overtime to clear towering piles. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani got creative. In addition to spreading 143 million pounds (65 million kilograms) of salt by Tuesday evening, the city had hired at least 3,500 emergency shovel crews, working $30-an-hour shifts to clear snow from bus stops and streets.
Electricity has been restored to hundreds of thousands of people who lost it in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware and Rhode Island. But nearly 160,000 customers in Massachusetts were still without power Wednesday morning. Cape Cod, which suffered most of the state’s outages, began slowly seeing power restored Wednesday, with utility Eversource promising that “99% of customers” would have power restored by Friday.
First responders in Newport, Rhode Island, found Salve Regina University student Joseph Boutros, 21, unconscious while charging his phone in a car parked outside the university building. Police said the car’s exhaust pipe was blocked by snow and that his death from carbon monoxide poisoning was accidental.
Many Rhode Islanders found themselves stuck at home for the third morning in a row as residential roads were not yet repaired. Those who did get out often had to walk to the nearest main road.
Some sidewalks are not accessible to people with disabilities.
There was still much work to be done. In some parts of New York, people are feeling like they’re on an island, according to Jeff Peters, spokesman for the New York Center for Disabled Independence.
“You might have a portion of the sidewalk that is clear, and then you have a 6-inch (15-centimeter) path where you can only walk one foot in front of the other, and there will be no room for a stroller, rollator, walker or crutches,” Peters said. “Then you get to the corner and not only has it not been shoveled, but there’s basically a glacier at the end of it.”
Tina Guenette, who uses a power wheelchair, had to clean up her yard this week after more than 33 inches (84 centimeters) fell in Harrisville, Rhode Island, about 17 miles (27 kilometers) northwest of Providence.
“I really don’t have a choice if I want my guide dog to go outside,” Guenette said. Harrisville’s volunteer snow removal program hasn’t had any volunteers in years, she said.
The storm brought down tons of snow.
Monday’s storm blanketed the region with falling snow, canceled flights, disrupted public transportation and downed power lines. More than 3 feet (0.9 meters) of snow fell in Rhode Island. This figure surpasses the snowfall from the historic blizzard that hit the Northeast in 1978, the Korea Meteorological Administration said.
Meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, crunched the numbers to show that if all the snow that fell from Maryland to Maine had fallen in Manhattan alone, it would have been more than a mile high. If the snow piled up just in Rhode Island, the hardest-hit island, the entire Maritime state would be buried under more than 92 feet of snow.
Maue calculated that all of that snow contained a total of 2.5 trillion gallons of water. If melted, it would be enough to fill the Empire State Building with water more than 9,000 times. New York State received 680 billion gallons of water, Pennsylvania received 410 billion gallons, and Massachusetts received 28 billion gallons.
When it eventually melts, it will help alleviate the drought affecting the Northeast, he said. But now it’s adding misery to an already harsh season.
“This storm seems to have gone from a harsh winter to an extreme winter, a record-breaking extreme winter,” he said.
In New York City, workers will use large warm water buckets to dump large quantities of snow and ice, Acting Sanitation Director Javier Lojan said. They helped melt 23 million pounds (11.5 metric tons) of snow during last month’s storms.
According to Josh Estrella, public information director for the city of Providence, Rhode Island, snow is falling in five areas of Rhode Island that have accumulated snow. Estrella said the challenge is so great that an arena could be added.
New York City schools are returning to normal
Some large school districts, including Philadelphia, returned to in-person learning starting Wednesday. Philadelphia moved to online learning for the first two days of the week. Schools reopen in Boston. It has been closed since last week for winter vacation. But in hardest-hit Rhode Island, Providence schools were closed Wednesday due to the third snowfall, switching to “virtual learning.”
In New York City, it’s another day in the classroom for more than 900,000 students in the nation’s largest public school system. But many students and their guardians had to jump over mountains of snow and dodge salt spreaders during morning drop-off time.
Thousands of flights to and from the United States have been canceled in recent days. The chaos appeared to be subsiding, with nearly 200 flights canceled by Wednesday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Rhode Island’s TF Greene International Airport reopened Tuesday. Some flights departed on Wednesday while others were cancelled.
When Jamie Myers’ plane touched down in New York from Buenos Aires, Argentina on Tuesday evening, a cabin full of relieved passengers erupted in applause. The Manhattan resident was scheduled to arrive home on Sunday, but the cancellation caused significant delays.
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