Snowstorm slams US East Coast
New York, Jan 7 (EFE).- Residents of the Big Apple woke up Friday to the first major snowfall of 2022 thanks to a storm that also covered other cities in the eastern United States with a blanket of white.
The largest accumulations in New York City were in the borough of Queens, which is home to two of the three airports serving the most populous metropolitan area in the US.
The National Weather Service said that LaGuardia Airport led all locations in the city with 8.4 inches (21.3 cm) of snow, while 5.5 inches fell on John F. Kennedy International Airport.
During the 24 hours ending at 4:30 pm Friday, the number of canceled flights at LaGuardia was 420, according to website FlightAware, which said that JFK had 263 cancelations, as the storm added to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Facing his first snowstorm since becoming mayor last week, Eric Adams declined to close public schools.
“We lost a lot of school days due to Covid, we don’t have any more days to waste,” he said, hailing the city’s Department of Sanitation for deploying some 1,600 plows to clear the snow despite having more than a fifth of its workforce out sick.
“A snowstorm is not going to stop us, an economic storm is not going to stop us,” the new mayor said. “We are going to forge ahead.”
Farther north in Massachusetts, larger snowfalls prompted school closings in dozens of districts. The highest reported total in the state was 15.2 inches in the Boston suburb of Milton.
In the greater Washington area, which includes parts of Maryland and Virginia, the maximum accumulation on Friday was around 4 inches, a relief to residents who had to cope with up 10 inches of snow earlier this week.
Virginia, where some motorists spent 20 hours trapped in their vehicles when the previous storm shut down a major highway, urged people to avoid travel. EFE
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