A powerful winter storm, with heavy snow and winds, swept the east coast of the United States on Saturday (29), causing transportation chaos and interruptions to electric services in a region where about 70 million people live.
With multiple blizzard warnings in place, cities such as New York and Boston were the most affected by the storm, which the National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed on Saturday had intensified into a “bomb cyclone”, which characterized by the explosive power of rapid drops in atmospheric pressure.
Coastal regions are expected to receive more than 30 centimeters of snow at the end of the day and up to 90 centimeters in some areas of Massachusetts, where more than 119,000 homes have been reported without power.
Frost warnings were even issued in Florida (southeast), where the NWS even warned of the risk of falling iguana trees – a species of lizard that can weigh up to nine kilos – as the animals are temporarily frozen.
Machines sprayed salt and snowplows operated on the streets of New York, where on Saturday morning about ten centimeters of snow had accumulated.
The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, urged residents on Twitter to stay indoors and posted videos of visits to different districts throughout the day.
In Times Square, the neon signboards were overshadowed by the blizzard.
But the frigid temperatures didn’t deter Robert Burck, a street artist known as the “naked cowboy.” Wearing only underwear, a hat and boots, he walked around the tourist spot playing his guitar.
“It’s fantastic,” Gonzalo Vázquez, one of the few tourists who walked there, told AFP in Spanish. “It’s like skiing surrounded by lights and LED screens.”
– “Stay at home” –
The state governments of New York and New Jersey declared a state of emergency and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu declared a snow emergency.
“It’s going to get really ugly,” Wu said in a TV interview on Saturday. “It will be a historic storm,” he added.
Massachusetts residents rushed Friday to buy fuel, as well as ice and snowmelt products to help keep sidewalks and access to their homes clean.
On Saturday morning, the Boston Public Works service reported that 500 snowplows were at work on the city’s streets.
The storm will bring extremely cold temperatures with dangerous gusts of wind between Saturday night and Sunday morning, the weather service said.
“Go home carefully tonight, stay home over the weekend, avoid any unnecessary travel,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement, noting that there would be especially heavy snowfall on Long Island, New York and the lower Hudson Valley area.
She also asked people who needed to travel to fill their cars with gasoline and bring provisions like ice scrapers, blankets and water in their vehicles.
About 3,500 flights, both domestic and international, were canceled on Saturday in the United States, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. About 1,000 flights that were supposed to take off on Sunday were also suspended.
Friday’s cancellations topped 1,450.
The storm follows a similar one, which two weeks ago covered much of eastern North America from Georgia to Canada with snow, leaving many homes without power and disrupting thousands of air connections.
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