A winter storm unfurled a blanket of snow and ice along the East Coast on Monday, disrupting routines and causing power outages over much of the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast.
The storm was enough to seriously disrupt travel into and out of Washington, D.C., where snowfall was forecast to reach up to a foot overnight despite a midafternoon lull. The Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport shut down its runways Monday evening in order to clear the accumulation and said it might not reopen until morning.
Across the United States, more than 8,000 flights — including the majority of those scheduled at Reagan — had been delayed or canceled as of Monday evening, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking service.
Amtrak canceled dozens of trains in the busy Northeast Corridor and other affected states, and driving conditions were dangerous from West Virginia to Delaware.
More than 200,000 people in the storm’s path, from Missouri to Virginia, were without power late Monday afternoon, according to the utility tracking website PowerOutage.us, though the number appeared to be shrinking.
In Richmond, Va., power outages affected the water reservoirs, prompting city officials to issue a boil water advisory and to warn that some residents would temporarily lose their water service.
The storm swept across the Midwest over the weekend, and a couple inches of snow were still likely to fall in parts of the Ohio Valley, where travel disruptions continued.
Some Southern states got a mix of sleet, freezing rain and icy buildup on Monday. In northern Kentucky and parts of southern West Virginia, ice accumulation was forecast to surpass a quarter-inch, which could create dangerous conditions for drivers and pedestrians and increase the risk of power failures.
The Southeast could also see severe thunderstorms into Monday evening, according to the Weather Prediction Center.
Deadly snow blasted Midwestern states.
The storm has been moving east from the Midwest, where blizzard conditions in Kansas and Missouri led to the deaths of at least three people and created hazardous conditions for travelers.
The National Weather Service in Kansas City, Mo., reported that the international airport there had received 11 inches of snow on Sunday, the fourth-largest single-day total in the city’s recorded history.
In Topeka, Kan., the Weather Service said late Sunday that it expected a final total of 14.1 inches, which would be the third-highest single-day snowfall recorded in the area.
People in the Kansas City area hunkered indoors, hemmed in by ice-covered driveways and roads deemed too treacherous for travel. In some places, lightning and booming thunder accompanied gusting winds as the storm blew across the region.
“This is a rare blizzard for Kansas City,” Gary Lezak, a longtime meteorologist in the area, said on Sunday. “It is insanely cold.”
It was deadly, too. In Kansas, west of Salina, a fire truck and several tractor-trailers and passenger vehicles overturned; an S.U.V. slid off the road near Wichita and rolled down an embankment, killing both occupants.
Trucks lost control on icy roads and went spiraling into ditches, and pileups backed up traffic on interstate highways across the Midwest. The Missouri Highway Patrol reported more than 150 storm-related crashes in the state, including one that killed a 61-year-old man, and said on Monday that the roads remained dangerous even as the snow began to ebb.
Cold weather lingers.
The snow is expected to taper off by Tuesday morning, although light snowfall may continue during the day over parts of the Central Appalachians. Cold, gusty weather is forecast to follow.
The Weather Prediction Center ” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>warned that nighttime temperatures were expected to fall into the single digits and near zero across the Central Plains and into the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys. Daytime highs in these areas are projected to stay below freezing, while the Mid-Atlantic will see slightly less cold conditions, with daytime temperatures near freezing.
“Some of those really much-below-normal temperatures are going to be expected to linger through most of this week,” said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, adding that cold weather advisories had been issued extending as far south as Florida. From the eastern Rockies to the East Coast, temperatures were forecast to be about 10 to 12 degrees below seasonal averages.
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