New York soaks as winter storm halts flights, causes outages

The worst of the winter weather is winding down along the U.S. East Coast after a quick-moving storm swept northeast, leaving thousands of customers without power and grounding flights.

Rain started to taper off in Washington and in New York’s Central Park, where temperatures reached 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) Monday, according to the National Weather Service. Drizzly skies and gusty winds were still sweeping Boston, while snow was reported in upstate New York and across northern New England.

The winter precipitation is “pretty much done in D.C. to New York to Boston,” said Marc Chenard, a senior branch forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. “In general the storm will have some strong winds with it, but most of the bigger winter impacts will be in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, away from the coast.”

More than 1,600 flights have been canceled Monday, with airports in Charlotte, North Carolina and Toronto being hardest hit, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking service. An additional 3,059 air trips had been scrubbed on Sunday.

Outages

In addition to the transportation turmoil, almost 99,000 customers were without power in six states including Georgia, West Virginia and Maine, as of 2:27 p.m. Monday, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages reported on utility websites. The hardest hit were South Carolina and North Carolina.

The heaviest snow reported was across northeast Ohio, where as much as 20 inches (51 centimeters) has fallen, Chenard said.

Around Buffalo, New York, more than 16 inches of snow accumulated, according to the National Weather Service.

Across the border, a snowstorm that began early Monday is expected to bring as much as 24 inches of snow to Toronto, with Environment and Climate Change Canada keeping the country’s most-populous city under a winter storm warning. Parts of Quebec also face the same weather warning.

Temperatures in much of the U.S. Northeast will linger on the mild side through Wednesday, but the cold will return later in the week with the low in New York predicted to fall to 15 Thursday night, the National Weather Service said.

There is a chance another storm could develop by the end of the week, Chenard said, however there is a lot of uncertainty with the forecast right now.

“It is something worth watching,” he said.