Winter storm hits East coast

COLUMBIA, Conn. - A wintry storm responsible for deaths in the Midwest blasted the Northeast, dumping snow and sleet and clogging some of the nation's most heavily traveled highways. Snowfall in the region Thursday ranged from 2 inches to just over a foot in some places. The heaviest snowfall was along the Connecticut-Massachusetts-Rhode Island state lines and eastward, said National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Thompson. Thirteen inches was reported at Whitman, Mass. Schools, businesses and government agencies in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut closed early. The resulting exodus choked highways and streets. Authorities reported hundreds of mostly minor accidents throughout the region. Some vehicles were stranded along roadways, preventing plows from getting through. Susan Randolph of Bolton, Conn., said it took her an hour to make her normal 20-minute commute from her job at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. "A lot of drivers seem to have forgotten their snow driving skills," she said. Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell's vehicle got stuck in the mess, crawling along the highway at 5-10 mph for two hours from Suffield to Hartford in what should have been a 30-minute drive. "Stay home," she advised. "Go home, prop your feet up, watch the news." While the traffic crawled along the interstates, it also slowed at Northeast airports. There were delays up to three hours for arriving flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, where more than 200 flights had been canceled by late afternoon, officials said. Elsewhere, Boston's Logan International reported more than 100 flights canceled, as did Bradley International near Hartford. No major problems were reported at New York's airports; some airlines allowed passengers to reschedule their flights for free. The storm has been blamed for at least 36 deaths, mostly in traffic accidents, since it developed last weekend. A 23-year-old woman died Thursday morning when her pickup truck skidded and flipped over on a snowy highway in Waverly, N.Y., 74 miles southwest of Syracuse. Police said Jessica Rose Nash was partially ejected despite wearing a seat belt. Crews worked to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people left in the dark in the storm's ice-coated wake. In Oklahoma, about 330,000 homes and businesses still were without power Thursday, officials said. In Missouri, about 64,000 people were without electricity, including roughly 32,000 in the Kansas City and St. Joseph areas, state officials said. Sunshine and milder temperatures on Thursday helped cleanup efforts in much of the Plains, but another winter storm approaching from the west could dump heavy snow on parts of Oklahoma on Friday. In St. Joseph in northwest Missouri, Martha Shockey and her husband, Rick, have been without electricity at their house since Tuesday morning. They have been keeping the burners on their gas stove to keep warn, except when they go out for food and propane, Shockey said on Thursday. "The only thing you can do is grin and bear it and cope with it and figure that it's got to get better," she said. As the Midwest continued to emerge from the darkness, hundreds of snow plow operators in the Northeast were having a tough time getting out of traffic jams. "How can you plow and put material down, when the trucks are stuck in traffic?" said Doug Harris at Connecticut's transportation department storm center. Rell asked tractor-trailer drivers to get off highways for at least two hours to give plows room to work. State police said portions of several highways had to be closed for a time in part because motorists abandoned their vehicles in the travel lanes. Along the shoreline in Milford, Conn., sleet and hail turned the roads to sheets of ice. Ken Johnson, who was stopped at a Milford gas station, was hoping for even more snow. The 50-year-old arborist said he relies on snow plowing for his income in the winter. "I'm waiting for the people to start calling," he said. "I like the summertime; money grows on trees for me. God, let it snow more." In Albany, N.Y., snowy roads slowed traffic to a crawl. "People are crazy. ... They're still shopping," said Kay McIntyre, shoveling a sidewalk in suburban Colonie as cars inched into a nearby mall parking lot. In Rhode Island, two dozen school districts closed early, as did companies and state agencies in Providence. The workers' exodus and the snow choked streets in the capital city. "Traffic is at a standstill," Providence Police Sgt. Paul Zienowicz said. "It's one big traffic jam."

Northeast gets a taste of winter weather

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