A major winter storm dumped more than a foot of snow on parts of the Northeast, knocking out power to more than 250,000 customers at one point, and more snow was on the way, forecasters said Tuesday.
No deaths have been reported in the Northeast that has battered New England and other states, but more than 2 feet of snow was reported in parts of Worcester County, Massachusetts, as of 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
“This is not over,” Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said. “We have some concerns about what high winds and more snow will bring to other parts of the state. Lots of power outages in the southern part.”
About 19 inches of snow was reported in Rutland County, Vermont, at 5 pm on Tuesday. Another 6 to 12 inches were possible in that state, as well as northern New Hampshire and Maine, said the weather service.
There were more than 260,000 customers without power in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine as of 8 p.m., according to tracking PowerOutage.us website. Utility National Grid said snow and heavy, wet winds caused widespread damage to its systems.
More than 700 flights to or from LaGuardia and Newark airports in the New York City area and Boston’s Logan International were canceled Tuesday, according to flight tracking. FlightAware website.
In Derry, New Hampshire, where about a foot of snow fell, a child got trapped due to the fall of a tree fire department said. Firefighters and police officers used chainsaws and their bare hands to free the boy, who was taken to a hospital with minor injuries, the department said.
«Please stay off roads if possible,» New Hampshire State Police tweeted Tuesday, warning of blackout conditions. There were more than 120 crashes and off-road vehicles in the seven hours between 5 am and noon, she said.
In California, more than 300,000 homes and businesses were without power Tuesday as an «atmospheric river» continued to impact the state, according to poweroutage.us and the weather service.
According to the weather service, more than 800,000 people in the western United States were under flood warnings as of Tuesday afternoon.
The rain had mostly stopped in San Francisco, but forecasters warned of high winds likely to topple trees. San Francisco International Airport said high winds forced a ground stopwhich was later raised.
Glass from a window flew off a San Francisco high-rise building, prompting the fire department to tell people to shelter in place due to falling glass, according to the fire department and NBC Bay Area. No injuries were reported.
“The wind was blowing extremely hard, it was hard to even walk, and you really had to support yourself,” Andrew Bowers, a San Francisco resident, told the station. «And then the pews started tipping over, and I heard a loud crash.»
Bowers said people ran when the glass shattered in the street and hid under an overhang of a building.
In Monterey County, crews worked to finish filling the width of a 400-foot breach in a levee along the Pajaro River, which opened during heavy rains Friday night, flooding the town of Pajaro, authorities said. authorities.
That will slightly reduce the flow out of the river, but work to build the wall at levee height is expected to take a week or two, Monterey County said. A second breach near the mouth of the river allowed water to flow into the ocean and reduced flood levels, he said.
A mudslide caused extensive damage to a home in Colfax, in Placer County, northeast of Sacramento, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, said. There were no injuries and all are accounted for, he said.
Heavy rains in central and southern California through Tuesday night could cause flooding in areas already vulnerable from recent rains, the weather service said.
In the southern and southeastern US, more than 38 million people were under freeze warnings, according to the agency. Northern Alabama could see temperatures of 25 degrees Wednesday morning, the weather service in Birmingham said.