Travel ban and blizzard warnings as major storm hits north-east US

Millions of people in New York City and a large swathe of the US north-east were stuck at home under road travel bans and blizzard warnings on Monday as heavy snow and strong winds intensified, creating whiteout conditions in the region.

Snow fell at a rate of more than two inches an hour on Monday from New York through to Massachusetts.

Some areas have witnessed more than a foot of snow since Sunday, along with wind gusts of more than 30mph and low visibility.

Long Island MacArthur Airport reported 20 inches of snow as of Monday morning, while Freehold, in New Jersey, had 19 inches.

The National Weather Service called travel conditions “nearly impossible” and blizzard warnings stretched from Maryland to Maine.

Mobile phones across New York City received alerts on Sunday night announcing a ban on non-emergency travel on all streets through to noon on Monday because of “dangerous blizzard conditions”. Rhode Island and New Jersey implemented similar restrictions.

More than 5,000 flights in and out of the United States were cancelled for Monday, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Most were cancelled in New York, New Jersey and Boston. Public transport was suspended in some areas.

The storm caused power outages that left more than 300,000 customers in the dark along the east coast on Monday, including about 115,000 customers without power in New Jersey, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide.

Emergencies were declared in New York, Philadelphia and other cities, as well as several states stretching from Delaware to Massachusetts.

“The combination of heavy snowfall and strong winds will continue to produce blizzard conditions along the north-eastern seaboard,” the weather service said on Monday. “Sharply reduced visibility will make travel extremely treacherous across these areas.”

Weather service meteorologist Frank Pereira said the storm could possibly become a bomb cyclone, which is when a storm drops at least 24 millibars in pressure in 24 hours.

New York City and Boston cancelled public school classes for Monday, while Philadelphia will switch to online learning. New York mayor Zohran Mamdani called it the “first old-school snow day since 2019”.

Various landmarks and cultural institutions announced closures on Monday, from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC. Broadway shows were cancelled on Sunday evening.

The weather service said the storm’s strong wind gusts could cause whiteout conditions and warned of a “potentially historic/destructive storm” south-east of the Boston-Providence corridor.

“Winds like that, combined with heavy, wet snow, are a recipe for damaged trees and prolonged power outages,” said Bryce Williams, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Boston office. “That’s what we’re most concerned with, is the combination of those extreme snow amounts with that wind.”