Snow storm hits half of US
Baku, February 4 (AZERTAC). The blizzard that dropped a foot or more of snow across a staggeringly wide area of the country, from Oklahoma up through a paralyzed Chicago and across parts of an ice-glazed New England, finally began to weaken Wednesday. It left behind a long trail of spun-out cars, darkened homes, closed schools and stranded fliers.
But the harsh winter weather was not over, forecasters warned: a bitter cold front threatened to follow the storm, bringing subzero temperatures to many areas trying to dig out.
So even as Chicago was trying to recover from the third-biggest snowfall in its history -- a monster of a storm that smothered the city in 20.2 inches of snow, stranded hundreds of drivers on Lake Shore Drive for hours, closed the city's schools for the first time in a dozen years and whipped up gusts that reached 70 miles an hour at one point -- the National Weather Service was still issuing warnings. The temperature there was expected to fall to 5 below zero overnight, and to 20 below in outlying areas, with the wind chill making it feel colder.
It was a terrible day for travel, whether by train, plane or automobile. More than 6,000 flights, about a fifth of the country's air traffic, were canceled on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com, which tracks air travel.
Amtrak shut down service between New York and Philadelphia during the morning rush hour, and canceled many trains in and out of Chicago. Not only were side roads closed by snow and ice, but Interstate highways also were shut down.
Two-thirds of the country seemed to be reeling from one form of extreme weather or another. There were tornado warnings along the Gulf Coast. Snow and ice forced Texas to institute rolling power blackouts. The heavy snow in Oklahoma left The Tulsa World unable to print the newspaper for the first time in its 106-year history. Both Milwaukee and Chicago groaned under heavy snow.
In New York, falling ice shut both the Verrazano-Narrows and George Washington Bridges for part of the morning. And the snow, ice and freezing rain continued to move east across New England, and might have contributed to the collapse of an office building in Middletown, Conn., that sprayed bricks across Main Street.
With 30 states feeling the storm's impact, the National Weather Service had to upgrade its Web site to handle traffic that reached up to 20 million hits an hour, officials said. Snow fell from New Mexico and Texas up to Minnesota, and east to Maine.
Several places were hit with more than two feet of snow, and by Wednesday evening more than a foot of snow had been recorded in parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and several other states were close behind.
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