Winter storm takes aim at Northeast
The storm that blanketed parts of the U.S. South with ice and snow yesterday is now pounding the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, hampering travel and aiming to drop what could be a foot of snow in the New York City area by the time it is done.
At least 16 deaths have been blamed on the weather -- many of them relating to traffic accidents. The weather has left hundreds of thousands of customers without power -- the vast majority of whom were in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Follow this blog for a roundup of the latest news and a close-up provided by those experiencing the weather.
At least 16 deaths have been blamed on the weather -- many of them relating to traffic accidents. The weather has left hundreds of thousands of customers without power -- the vast majority of whom were in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Follow this blog for a roundup of the latest news and a close-up provided by those experiencing the weather.
by Jason.Hanna
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A day after ice and snow blanketed parts of Georgia and cut power for tens of thousands in the state, temperatures are forecast to warm into the 40s, which will help clear the roads.
Atlanta-area schools are closed for the day -- quite an opportunity for kids to have some fun at the city's Piedmont Park, as CNN's Nick Valencia shows us:Lots of sledding at Piedmont Park in Atlanta. Kids hamming it up for the #CNN & Weather Channel news crews http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BgXOpLLIIAEr5L0.jpg
Feb. 13, 2014- Reply
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We noted earlier that some people were wondering why New York City
schools -- with its roughly 1 million students -- were open during
Thursday's snowstorm, even as the mayor declared a city emergency. New
York City Mayor Bill de Blasio gave some answers in his news
conference minutes ago:
1) It was a tough decision, but officials believed children could get to school safely Thursday morning. Snow later came down sooner and faster than expected, which could make departures tricky, but, "within the information we had," city officials made the right decision to open the schools, he said.
2) Huge numbers of New Yorkers still had to go to work, and they needed a safe place for their children to be during the day.
3) De Blasio said he believed that since 1979, New York City schools have closed only 11 times.
He also took an indirect swipe at other cities, saying New York doesn't typically shut down in the face of adversity.
After-school programs are canceled today, he said. -
A quick look at what winter looks like in another part of the country: Check out these "ice caves" in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan.
CNN affiliate WPBN took video of these enormous ice accumulations off the shore of Lake Michigan near Leland. Cold air, high winds and waves helped create them; some are as tall as 30 feet. -
Hold your noses for this news, New York City residents: Because of a combination of the snow, the weekend and Presidents Day, trash and recycling collection won't resume "in earnest" until Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
There might be a few exceptions, he said at a news conference, and people still should put out their trash as usual. "Where we have the opportunity to get at it (before Tuesday), we will," he said. -
CNN's Chris Kokenes gives us this photo from Leonia, New Jersey. "Falling trees are a threat, but we've been lucky thus far and have not had any power outages," he told CNN's iReport.
Leonia is not far from Fort Lee and the George Washington Bridge, which connects New Jersey to Manhattan.
Snow Leonia NJ
CNN iReport -
by Jason.Hanna
How is the weather affecting you?Send us your photos and videos of snow, ice and sleet -- only if it is safe to do so -- by tagging your social media images #cnnireport or visiting CNN's iReport. Or use the CNN app.
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#Airmen of the #Georgia @AirNatlGuard 's 165th ASOS working right now in #augusta clearing roads of debris. #wx #pax http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BgX8tDWCEAEw2NR.png
by GA National Guard via twitter 2/13/2014 6:48:52 PM -
Snow, snow and more snow! The National Weather Service reports daily maximum snowfall records Thursday at the following locations (in inches): JFK International – 5.5; LaGuardia – 7.7; Islip, New York – 8.1; Newark, New Jersey – 9.4 and Bridgeport, Connecticut – 9.5. -
Thomas Galante took this photo of a man shoveling the sidewalk during a break in the snow in Philadelphia. This iReporter used the Camerabag 2 application to add a border and make the photo black and white.
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Worst day yet for winter travelers
Thursday has been the worst day "by far" of 2014 for flight cancellations, with more than 6,300 U.S. flights, of about 29,000 scheduled flights, canceled by mid-afternoon, according to Daniel Baker, CEO of flight tracking service FlightAware. The second most-affected day of a notoriously brutal winter was January 6, when more than 4,100 flights were canceled, Baker said.
Read about that, and more, from CNN's Holly Yan here. -
A little over 91,000 customers are without service, Eric Boomhower, with South Carolina Electric & Gas, told CNN. That's down from around 120,000 earlier. "Certainly this has been a major weather impact event for our system. It may be the biggest weather event that’s hit us, from a utility standpoint, since Hurricane Hugo back in 1989," he said.
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What happens to the homeless? District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray speaks to CNN's Wolf Blitzer about those who might not have anywhere to go when it gets cold.
“The people who have mental health or substance abuse problems who won’t come into the shelters, what we’ve done now is we’ve put out what we call warming buses – where the buses are located in places where people congregate on the streets. And we’ve actually gotten several hundred homeless people to come and be on the buses, who would not go into the shelters otherwise," Gray said. -
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The death toll climbs.
Three men in Maryland -- ages 45, 55 and 57 -- have died of suspected cardiac arrest suffered "while in the act of shoveling snow," said Howard County, Maryland, spokesman Mark Miller. Including those men, officials have tied at least 16 deaths to the winter storm now affecting the East Coast.
