Millions remain under blizzard warnings as nor’easter pummels the Northeast
Across the Northeast, roughly 16 million people were under some type of winter weather alert Saturday night. Of those, seven million were under blizzard warnings.
Blizzard warnings are expected to remain in effect through Sunday morning for eastern Massachusetts and most of Maine.
A blizzard, by the National Weather Service’s definition, requires blowing or falling snow, winds of at least 35 miles per hour, and visibility of a quarter-mile or less for at least three hours.
Light to moderate snowfall will continue into the evening, with snow expected to end in the eastern part of Massachusetts by 11 p.m., the governor’s office said.
Parts of eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island saw more than two feet of snow and blizzard conditions, and a few areas in Massachusetts saw hurricane-force wind gusts, with Cape Cod getting the strongest gales.
“This is coming down hard and fast, and so it’s been historic,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu told CNN Saturday evening.
“Hunker down for 24 hours, and sometime tomorrow, you’ll be able to go back out and resume some of your normal activities,” Tom Guthlein, Rhode Island’s acting director of emergency management, said early Saturday.
Some areas crush snowfall records
In New Jersey’s Atlantic City, howling wind whipped snow sideways earlier Saturday, and a CNN crew there could barely see anything a block away. The city crushed its all-time January snowfall record by Saturday, reaching a staggering monthly total of 33.2 inches of snow. It had received about 19.2 inches prior to the storm and added another 14 inches Saturday, CNN meteorologist Gene Norman said Saturday afternoon. The prior monthly record of 20.3 inches was set in January 1987.
The city’s 14 inches of snow Saturday also beat its previous record for the calendar date, which was set in 2014 at 7.3 inches.
As the storm pummeled through, several other areas crushed previous January 29 snowfall records, including New York’s Central Park, which recorded 7.3 inches, beating the previous record of 4.7 inches set in 1904, and Philadelphia, which saw 5.8 inches of snow Saturday, beating the previous record of 5 inches, also set in 1904.
Up to 2 feet of snow could fall by Sunday morning from Long Island through Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, CNN forecasters said.
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