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Winter storm grounds US flights
14/12/2007 09:18 - (SA)
Columbia, Connecticut - A wintry storm responsible for deaths in the Midwest blasted the northeastern US, dumping snow and sleet and clogging some of the nation's most heavily travelled highways.
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 on Thursday morning when her pickup truck skidded and flipped over on a snowy highway in Waverly, New York, 120km southwest of Syracuse.
Snowfall in the region on Thursday ranged from five centimetres to just over 30cm in some places. The heaviest snowfall was along the Connecticut-Massachusetts-Rhode Island state lines and eastward, said National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Thompson.
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.
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 cancelled by late afternoon, officials said.
Elsewhere, Boston's Logan International reported more than 100 flights cancelled, 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.
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 on 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 clean-up efforts in much of the Plains, but another winter storm approaching from the west could dump heavy snow on parts of Oklahoma on Friday.
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