At least 18 deaths were blamed on yesterday’s weather in the US…. resulting from car crashes, shovelling snow and hypothermia. More snow is still expected today.
It was Top 3 in New York, where more than 25 inches of snow had fallen as of 7 p.m. Saturday, close to the record, 26.9 inches, set in February 2006. Here are some scenes captured on video:
Three people died while shovelling snow in Queens and Staten Island. Normally busy streets were quiet and those who did venture out walked down the middle of snow-covered streets to avoid even deeper drifts on the sidewalks.
Officials put a travel ban in the city, ordering all nonemergency vehicles off the roads. Commuter rails and above-ground segments of the nation’s biggest subway system shut down, too, along with buses.
In Washington, monuments that would typically be busy with tourists stood vacant with mass transit shut down through to today.
Throughout the region, drivers faced terrible road conditions and there were accidents that killed several people including a 4-year-old boy in North Carolina; a Kentucky transportation worker who was plowing highways; and a woman whose car plunged down a 300-foot embankment in Tennessee.
An Ohio teenager sledding behind an all-terrain vehicle was hit by a truck and killed, and two people died of hypothermia in southwest Virginia. In North Carolina, a man whose car had veered off an icy-covered road was arrested on charges of killing a motorist who stopped to help.
In Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, drivers were stuck for hours on snowy highways.
Roofs collapsed on a historic theatre in Virginia and a horse barn in Maryland, while seaside towns in New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland had flooding.
From Virginia to New York, sustained winds topped 30 mph and gusted to around 50 mph. The storm also had bursts of thunder and lightning.
Airlines cancelled nearly 7,000 weekend flights and started to cut Monday service.
The storm also knocked out electricity to thousands of homes and businesses.
SOURCES: YouTube, National Weather Service
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