For U.S. East, no letup yet; snow on way

Liz Hall digs her car out Friday in Albany, N.Y. Snowfall of 12 to 27 inches closed schools across the state, but in New York City classes were held to the chagrin of many parents, including TV weatherman Al Roker.
Liz Hall digs her car out Friday in Albany, N.Y. Snowfall of 12 to 27 inches closed schools across the state, but in New York City classes were held to the chagrin of many parents, including TV weatherman Al Roker.

PHILADELPHIA - A winter storm that dropped snow and ice on the East Coast moved offshore Friday after causing at least 25 deaths, leaving hundreds of thousands without power and triggering a pileup in Pennsylvania that injured 30 people.

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AP

Smashed-up vehicles litter one side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike after dozens of vehicles crashed on the slush-covered roadway Friday in Bensalem, Pa.

But a second system is taking aim at eastern New England this weekend. Boston might get 6 inches, and Cape Cod more, from a storm sweeping across the U.S. that is expected to intensify off the coast today, the National Weather Service said. New York might get 2 to 4 inches.

“This storm is going to blow up [this] afternoon and pass south and east of New England,” said Rob Carolan,owner of Hometown Forecast Services Inc. in Nashua, N.H. “The worst weather is probably [this] afternoon into [this] evening.”

The storm was centered in Missouri on Friday. Ahead of the system, the weather service has issued winter-weather advisories as far east as North Carolina and Virginia.

The bad weather this week dropped snow, sleet and rain on roads already covered with deep puddles and icy patches.

Alexander Baez, 24, spent two hours digging out his car before navigating snow-covered roads to his job as a judicial marshal. “It will be a long, slow commute,” Baez said at a gas station in East Hartford, Conn. “I can’t wait until the summer comes.”

Traffic accidents involving multiple tractor-trailers and dozens of cars completely blocked one side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike outside Philadelphia on Friday morning and injured 30 people, none seriously. The crashes were reported about five hours after snow stopped falling. Speed restrictions during the storm had been lifted, but motorists say the roadway was coated with ice.

The accidents created a 5-mile traffic jam between the Bensalem and Willow Grove exits of the turnpike. The jam was cleared by the middle of the afternoon, and officials reopened the roadway in both directions by 4 p.m.

Stuck motorists turned off their engines to conserve gas. One of them, Chuck Wacker, 53, of Plymouth Meeting, Pa., counted about 30 smashed-up vehicles around him.

“It’s a pretty calm atmosphere right now,” he said. “People are sharing food and water.”

By the time the storm passed through the Northeast, 22.5 inches of snow had been reported in Somerset County, Pa. Parts of upstate New York got between 12 and 27 inches.

The sloppy mix of snow and sleet grounded more than 6,500 flights nationwide Thursday and about 2,100 more Friday. About 1.2 million utility customers lost power as the storm moved from the South through the Northeast, dropping to about 450,000 without power by Friday morning, mostly in South Carolina and Georgia.

On Friday afternoon, conditions in one snow-walloped city were still affecting flights at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field, according to the airport’s website. Four Charlotte, N.C., flights had been canceled, spokesman Shane Carter said. Meanwhile, flights to and from Atlanta - which were scratched in bulk the previous two days - had fully resumed.

Multiple flights to the Northeast were canceled Thursday at Northwest Regional Arkansas Airport in Highfill, but according to the airport’s website, service to the region had resumed without interruption Friday.

In the Northeast, Amtrak, which curtailed Washington-to-Boston service, said it expects to resume normal operations today, while New York’s Metro-North commuter line was running on a weekend schedule.

“Every time it snows, it’s like, ‘Oh, not again,’” said Randal DeIvernois of New Cumberland, Pa., which had about 10 inches of snow by midafternoon Thursday. “I didn’t get this much snow when I lived in Colorado.”

Many schools remained closed Friday in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York state, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Virginia, while some in Rhode Island opened late.

The treacherous weather was blamed for more than two dozen deaths, many of them in vehicle accidents.

In North Carolina, two people were killed Thursday night when they tried to help the driver of a tractor-trailer cab that spun out on Interstate 40 near Garner. Another driver faces second-degree murder and other charges in the hit-and-run wreck, the state Highway Patrol said.

In New York, 36-year-old Min Lin died after she was struck by a utility vehicle with a snowplow attached to it as it backed up outside a shopping center in Brooklyn. She was rushed by paramedics to a medical center, where her nearly full term, 6-pound, 6-ounce baby was delivered via cesarean section, hospital spokesman Eileen Tynion said.

The baby was in critical condition in the neonatal intensive-care unit, she said. No charges were immediately filed against the snowplow operator.

The snow, sleet and ice that bombarded the Southeast on Wednesday took its ferocity into the Northeast on Thursday and Friday.

Washington, D.C., received 9 inches of snow Thursday; Westminster, Md., reported 19 inches; and Newark, Del., had 14 inches. New York City received nearly 10 inches, and parts of New Jersey had more than 11.

Some parts of northern New England got more than 18 inches.

In New York, the teachers union and TV weatherman Al Roker criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision Thursday to keep schools open. Roker, who was in Russia for the Winter Olympics but has a daughter in New York’s public schools, said on Twitter: “It’s going to take some kid or kids getting hurt before this goofball policy gets changed.”

He largely stood by his criticism Friday but apologized on NBC’s Today show for a tweet forecasting “one term” for de Blasio, saying that was “below the line.”

The mayor said many parents depend on schools to watch over their children while they are at work and that keeping them open was the right decision.

In Washington, federal offices and airports were open Friday, and the District of Columbia government lifted its snow emergency, though many schools were closed another day.

The commute was dicey and icy around the nation’s capital.

A stretch of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway was closed for 2½ hours because of icy conditions. More buses were put back into service, but the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority warned commuters to expect detours to keep buses “off of hilly terrain, narrow side streets and other problem areas.”

Across the South, the storm left in its wake ice-encrusted trees and driveways and snapped branches and power lines.

In South Carolina, about 228,000 homes and businesses were without power Friday, and officials warned it could be next week before it is restored for everyone. Gov. Nikki Haley visited Aiken and Walterboro to look at some of the most heavily damaged areas.

“I didn’t know this was going to be in the same realm as Hugo,” Haley said of the hurricane that struck in 1989. “To look at these neighborhoods and see the trees down and on houses - to see all of the devastation that’s happened to this community - is terrible.”

One coastal South Carolina electric cooperative lost 50 poles in the ice storm, compared with 21 in the last hurricane, officials said.

“With a hurricane, the storm blows through, does its damage and it’s gone. An ice storm is like a hurricane followed by a series of mini-hurricanes. You restore power to an area, but then the ice comes back and the same area goes down again,” said Bob Paulling, CEO of Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative in Lexington.

Rural areas were hit the hardest, and their geography means it will be much more difficult to get power restored, said Mark Quinn, spokesman for the South Carolina co-ops. In urban areas, one fix of a power line often turns electricity back on for thousands of customers.

Losing power in a rural area often means losing water, too. Many residents are on wells with pumps that need electricity to operate. Some people had buckets out to catch the melting ice so they could use the water to flush toilets.

Roads in the region finally thawed Friday, allowing many in the hardest-hit areas to leave their homes. But there weren’t many places to go, as few stores had power.

Dollar General stores across the region let people shop by flashlight, but were only taking cash because there was no way to scan credit cards. Intersections became risky games of chicken because traffic lights were out, and deputies were elsewhere trying to help clear trees and limbs off roads and checking on older people and the sick.

Nationwide, this is shaping up as one of the snowiest winters on record. As of early this month, Washington, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, New York and St. Louis had gotten about two or three times as much snow as they normally receive at this point in the season.

The latest round of bad weather also threatened to disrupt Friday deliveries of flowers for Valentine’s Day.

“This storm could not have been worse for us,” said Donna Mahair, owner of the Petal Patch flower shop in Newport, N.H., where more than a foot of snow fell. “All the schools are closed, so all the deliveries that were going to the schools, we now have to track down the people they were going to.”

Other businesses expected a bounce from the snow.

At Bob Skinner’s Ski and Sport near the Mount Sunapee ski area in New Hampshire, owner Frank MacConnell was overjoyed.

“There’s never too much snow,” he said. Sales and rentals are “off the charts,” he said, adding that the storm is a perfect prelude to the traditionally lucrative Washington’s Birthday holiday.

Information for this article was contributed by Mark Scolforo, Ron Todt, Michael Melia, Lynne Tuohy, Kevin Begos, Michael Rubinkam, Kathy Matheson, Sarah Brumfield, Brett Zongker, Matthew Barakat, David Dishneau, Jeffrey Collins, Maryclaire Dale, Matt Moore and Matt Rourke, Jeffrey Collins, Seanna Adcox, Kate Brumback and Meg Kinnard of The Associated Press; by Brian K. Sullivan, Lynn Doan, Jim Polson, Cheyenne Hopkins, Michael Shepard, Duane D. Stanford, Mary Schlangenstein, Rebecca Penty and Freeman Klopott of Bloomberg News; and by Michael Muskal and Richard Simon of the Tribune Washington Bureau; and by Scott Carroll of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/15/2014

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