Snow blankets O’Hare International Airport, Sunday, February 1 in Chicago. The first major winter storm of the year is bearing down on the Chicago region, bringing with it blizzard conditions of heavy snow and strong winds. More than 1,100 flights have been canceled at Chicago’s airports and snow-covered roads are making travel treacherous. (Photo: AP)
BOSTON (AP) — New England and portions of New York state awoke Monday to a fresh blanket of snow as a storm threatening to bring up to 1 to 2 feet to some areas churned across the Northeast, making for a slippery, tedious commute to start the workweek.
The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings for central New York, the western Catskills and much of New England through early Tuesday.
As the third major snowstorm in less than two weeks pummelled the region, officials and ordinary citizens alike faced the same conundrum: Where to put it all?
So far this winter in Massachusetts alone, state workers have removed enough snow to fill Gillette Stadium 90 times over, Governor Charlie Baker told reporters Monday morning, calling the situation “pretty much unprecedented.”
Some areas of Massachusetts had about a foot of snow before dawn, and the storm was expected to last all day Monday. The weather service reported an unofficial measurement of almost 14 inches in Norwell as of 5 a.m. Monday. Fitchburg, Leominster, Lunenburg and Ashby in north-central Massachusetts were all at 11 inches or more. Logan Airport in Boston had eight inches.
In New York, the snow stretched from Buffalo to the Hudson Valley, one day after 6 inches of snow fell on parts of the upstate region.
Amtrak cancelled portions of its passenger train service in upstate New York because of the storm. It said some trains linking New York City to Albany-Rensselaer and Niagara Falls, New York, were cancelled.
Government officials announced that schools and municipal offices in many communities would be closed and that parking bans would be in effect. As accidents began to accumulate, drivers were warned to stay off the slick roads.
“This storm marks our third major snow storm we have experienced in nearly two weeks,” as parts of Massachusetts have already seen over 60 inches of snowfall, Baker said, warning it would cause “many challenges” for the state.
The Boston area was expected to receive 1 to 2 feet of snow through Tuesday while Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, could each get up to a foot.
Across a broad swath of upstate New York, the weather service said as much as 9 to 18 inches of snow was expected from the Catskills to the southern Adirondacks by the time the storm moved out early Tuesday.
“I’m frustrated. The last thing I want to be talking about is another 24 inches of snow. I want to move on to something else,” Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh said at City Hall on Sunday. “It’s unprecedented. … Maybe up in Alaska or Buffalo, they have this amount of snow and they’re used to it.”
Adding insult to injury, the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency warned that potentially record cold temperatures and wind chills are expected to move into the region later in the week.
