Long-lived winter storm paralyses US northeast

NEW YORK: The US East Coast dug out on Friday from the final wallop of a deadly four-day storm that dumped more than two feet of snow in some places and made a mess of the morning commute, triggering crashes of up to 100 vehicles in Pennsylvania.

Blue skies belied a previous night of unusual thunder snow and lightning in New Jersey, and snowfall that measured 26 inches in Glyndon, Maryland, 32-km northwest of Baltimore, according to Chris Vaccaro, spokesman for the National Weather Service.

A new storm system was on its way Friday from the central Plains and expected to dump up to 3 inches on the East Coast into Saturday of Presidents Day holiday weekend, he said.

Ambulances rushed to treat people in dozens of flipped-over cars, jack-knifed tractor-trailers and vehicles that skidded off the Pennsylvania Turnpike during the morning commute, shutting down the major thoroughfare, according to television images.

“It was a chain reaction,” said Renee Colborn, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. Colborn said authorities do not have a count of the number of vehicles involved, but television traffic reporters in helicopters described a scene involving from 50 to 100 cars.

“There must have been some type of quick freeze this morning. The sun was out. We don’t have an exact reason why this accident occurred,” Colborn said.

Heavy snow fell in and around New York City, Boston and Philadelphia, where schools were closed for a second unplanned day on Friday.

The winter storm system, which earlier froze the southeast in its tracks, pushed north up through the mid-Atlantic states on Thursday, with fierce winds and heavy snow causing thousands of flight cancellations and school closures from Washington to Connecticut.

The storm has also been blamed for at least 15 deaths in the South. In New York, doctors were working to save the baby of a pregnant 36-year-old woman killed by a private snowplow in a parking lot in Brooklyn.

In Washington, DC, a man was found dead on a snow-covered sidewalk, though police were unsure if the incident was weather-related.