NYC Hit Hard as Winter Storm Knocks Out Power, Snarls Travel
(Bloomberg) -- A powerful winter storm started to taper off across the Northeast Monday evening after smashing records and dropping more than a foot of snow in eight states.
The impact is expected to linger for days. More than 11,000 flights have been grounded through Tuesday, and more than 500,000 homes and businesses were without power as of 5:45 p.m. local time.
Drivers in some parts of Massachusetts have been ordered to stay off the roads as snowplow crews struggle to catch up after whiteout conditions engulfed the state’s South Coast.
“We have reports of abandoned and stuck cars on the roads, and tow trucks are having difficulty getting to them,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said, urging drivers to stay put “for the safety of plow drivers and emergency officials who are trying to do their jobs.”
Manhattan’s Central Park recorded about 20 inches (50 centimeters) of snow from Sunday through Monday. Islip on Long Island received more than 22 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
Providence, Rhode Island, broke its record for a single snow storm with 32.8 inches, the National Weather Service said. The old record was set from Feb. 6-7 during the Blizzard of 1978 when 28.6 inches fell.
By Monday afternoon, the snow was dwindling off across New York and conditions were improving, said Jim Connolly, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
“The worst is over for New York,” Connolly said.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani lifted the directive that closed streets, highways and bridges to most traffic. City schools will be open for in-person instruction Tuesday.
The storm, however, still disrupted transportation across the Northeast and beyond. Amtrak suspended service between New York and Boston through Monday night, and cancellations mounted nationwide.
As of 5:45 p.m. New York time, 11,055 US flights scheduled from Sunday to Tuesday had been canceled, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking service.
Heavy snow had damaged power lines and caused outages stretching from Virginia to Massachusetts. As of 5:45 p.m., 519,232 homes and businesses were without power, according to PowerOutage.com. Massachusetts had the most outages with 282,024, followed by New Jersey with 93,090. Heavy, wet snow will continue to threaten tree limbs, raising risks to nearby power lines.
The heaviest snow and strongest winds swept across Long Island into Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, said Rob Carolan, owner of Hometown Forecast Services, which provides outlooks for Bloomberg Radio. Gusts reached 47 miles per hour at John F. Kennedy International Airport and as high as 70 mph on the Massachusetts islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.
US natural gas futures surged as much as 6.8% in early Asian trading on Sunday as traders expected higher demand for the heating and power-plant fuel as temperatures dropped. But most of those gains were wiped out in early US trading on Monday as the storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers across the Northeast.
Wholesale electricity prices on the East Coast grids were muted as demand came in much lower after rising to record levels in last month’s storm. Most power being used on Monday was contracted for in the day-ahead market, with real-time prices that came in lower due to weaker-than-forecast demand.
With many New York City businesses and schools closed, demand was also far below forecast for Monday. Spot prices in Manhattan and surrounding boroughs were $84.52 a megawatt-hour at 12:19 p.m., 12% higher than the day-ahead price of $75.48 for the hour.
On the adjacent and largest US grid operated by PJM Interconnection LLC, which stretches from New Jersey into North Carolina and out to Illinois, real-time prices were about $37 a megawatt-hour across the grid, weaker than day-ahead prices.
A weak system moving through the Mid-Atlantic Thursday into Friday may bring a few inches of new snow to New York City — possibly even as far north as Boston, said Frank Pereira, a senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center.
A more robust storm may arrive by the middle of next week, Pereira said, but it’s still too early to predict details. One computer forecast model sees rain across large East Coast cities, including New York, while another said there may be a little snow.
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