A major nor’easter has put 59 million people under weather warnings, triggering travel bans, power outages and widespread flight cancellations across the northeast US
A powerful winter storm is battering the northeast US and the Canadian Maritimes from Sunday evening into Monday, placing 59 million people under weather warnings, prompting travel bans, and causing significant disruption across several states. The system is forecast to bring heavy snowfall, fierce winds, and coastal flooding, with authorities warning of dangerous travel conditions across densely populated areas.
States of emergency have been declared in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, and Rhode Island as the blizzard intensifies. Several states have introduced restrictions or outright bans on travel in response to worsening conditions.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Sunday ordered the shutdown of the city’s entire traffic network for all but emergency travel as the massive snowstorm began to hit the northeast United States.
Millions under weather warnings
Around 40 million people are affected by blizzard warnings, with a further 19 million under winter storm warnings stretching from the Central Appalachians to coastal Maine.
Forecasters say the storm is expected to be the most powerful nor’easter in nearly a decade for much of the region.
“While we do get plenty of these nor’easters that produce heavy snow and strong impacts, it’s been several years since we saw one of this magnitude across this large of a region in this very populated part of the country,” Cody Snell, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.
Power cuts are increasing as the storm strengthens. More than 20,000 people in New Jersey are without electricity. Thousands more have lost power in Virginia, Delaware and Maryland, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us.
Widespread travel disruption
Air travel has been severely affected, with about 3,900 US flights cancelled on Sunday and hundreds more delayed, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.
The National Weather Service has warned that snowfall could reach 2-3 inches (.05-.07m) per hour at peak intensity. Total snowfall is forecast to range between 1-2 feet (0.3-0.6m), creating “nearly impossible” travel conditions.
Blizzard conditions are also expected to make travel “extremely treacherous” across parts of the northeast US, the service said.
End of Article
