Travel reduced to essentials, airports, schools and anti-Covid vaccination centers closed: a powerful blizzard-like snowstorm hit the northeastern United States on Monday, which could go down in the annals of the heaviest falls snowfall recorded in New York.
From Washington to Boston, from Pennsylvania to Maine, tens of millions of inhabitants had been placed on alert in the face of this snowy episode accompanied by squalls of up to 80 km / h. At 4 p.m. local time, the snow cover had reached nearly 39 cm in Central Park, according to the National Weather Service.
In the early evening, precipitation paused in New York. But the forecast was for more snowfall on Tuesday over the northeastern region, with another 30cm expected in places and still near blizzard conditions, the NWS tweeted.
According to data collected since 1869 in Central Park, a layer of more than 50 cm in total would rise in the eight snowiest episodes recorded in New York. The record dates from January 2016, with nearly 70 cm fallen in three days.
Some evoked the historic “great blizzard” of March 1888: the city, taken by surprise in early spring, had then deplored dozens of deaths and considerable material damage.
In an American economic capital already slowed down by the pandemic, Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared a local state of emergency in order to facilitate the maneuvers of clearing machines, omnipresent on the main roads.
It closed until Tuesday including schools that remained open despite the pandemic – mainly preschools and elementary schools – returning all students to online education.
While many workers have been working from home for months, the eight million residents have been urged to stay at home.
The anti-Covid-19 vaccination centers, which operate only by appointment – very difficult to get hold of due to the lack of sufficient vaccines – were also closed until Tuesday included.
“At this rate of snowfall, the snowplows cannot keep up,” warned New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Most of the commuter trains serving New York City and the skytrain sections stopped running in the afternoon.
“If you are not a + essential + worker, you must not be outside,” added the governor, warning motorists that they risk getting stuck on impassable roads.
– Congress in slow motion –
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has also declared a state of emergency, giving authorities the ability to close roads, evacuate homes and bring in equipment needed for public safety. Six major vaccination centers will also remain closed on Tuesday.
The situation “will get worse before it gets better,” the governor tweeted.
Almost all flights to or from the three airports serving the area, John F. Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark, have been canceled, one of their officials, Rick Cotton, said. In Boston, where snowfall was expected in the late afternoon, half of the flights scheduled to take off were canceled, according to the Flight Aware website.
Across the country, more than 1,600 flights had been canceled Monday at midday.
The federal capital Washington, where the snow had arrived on Sunday, postponed until Tuesday the return to school scheduled for Monday for thousands of schoolchildren, after almost a year of interruption due to the pandemic.
As Democrats and Republicans negotiated a new economic stimulus package, Congress slowed down, and President Joe Biden postponed a scheduled visit to the State Department.
No doubt due to the activity slowed down by the coronavirus, no serious accident in the metropolises concerned was immediately reported.
But in the suburb of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a couple in their fifties were shot dead by their neighbor after “an altercation over snow removal” in front of their house, Dale Binker, chief of the police told AFP. of Plains Township.
The shooter took his own life as police arrived to arrest him, he added.
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