A powerful winter storm with heavy snowfall and strong winds hit the eastern coast of the United States this Saturday, causing chaos in transport and power outages in a region where some 70 million people reside.
With multiple blizzard warnings in effect, cities including New York and Boston bore the brunt of the storm, which the National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed on Saturday had intensified into a “bomb cyclone.” , characterized by the explosive power of rapid drops in atmospheric pressure.
Coastal areas are expected to get more than a foot of snow by the end of the day, and up to 3 feet in parts of Massachusetts, where more than 119,000 homes were reported without power.
Frost alerts were issued even in Florida (southeast), where the NWS even warned of the risk of iguanas – a species of lizard that can weigh up to nine kilos – falling from the trees because they are temporarily frozen.
Salt spreaders and snow plows work on the streets of New York, where about 10 centimeters of snow accumulated on Saturday morning.
The mayor of this city, Eric Adams, asked citizens to stay home through Twitter and published videos of his tours of different districts throughout the day.
In Times Square, the neon lights of billboards fade through the blizzard.
But the frigid temperatures didn’t intimidate Robert Burck, a street artist known as the “naked cowboy.” Dressed only in underwear, a hat and cowboy boots, he walked around the tourist spot playing his guitar.
“It’s fantastic,” Spaniard Gonzalo Vázquez, one of the few tourists walking by, told AFP. “It’s like skiing surrounded by lights and LED screens.”
– “Stay at home” –
The governments of the states of New York and New Jersey declared a state of emergency and the mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, declared a snow emergency.
“It’s going to get pretty ugly,” Wu said in a television interview on Saturday. “It’s going to be a historic storm,” he said.
Massachusetts residents rushed Friday to buy groceries as well as ice and snow melting products to help keep sidewalks and driveways clear.
As of Saturday morning, Boston Public Works reported that 500 snowplows were already at work on city streets.
The storm will bring extremely cold temperatures with dangerous wind gusts between Saturday night and Sunday morning, the weather service said.
“Come home tonight with care, stay home through 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.
He also urged people who had to travel to fill up their cars with gas and carry supplies such as ice scrapers, blankets and water in their vehicles.
Some 3,500 flights, both domestic and international, were canceled Saturday in the United States, according to flight tracker FlightAware. Some 1,000 flights that were due to take off on Sunday have also been suspended.
Cancellations on Friday totaled more than 1,450.
The storm follows a similar one that blanketed much of eastern North America from Georgia to Canada with snow two weeks ago, leaving many homes without power and disrupting thousands of air connections.
