Snowstorm blows into mid-west and slowly heads toward north-east US

A powerful storm which dumped more than a foot of snow on Chicago on Sunday is heading slowly east, forcing school closures throughout the mid-west and north-east.

Chicago Public Schools, the third largest public school system in the country, along with districts in Detroit, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, canceled classes for Monday as the National Weather Service issued storm warnings and watches stretching from western Iowa into upper New England.

“Now we are worried about the winds, with blizzard warnings and near white-out conditions,” said Amy Seeley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chicago. “It’s reducing visibilities and will cause problems for people traveling tonight.”

Six inches (15 cm) of snow was forecast for Cleveland, Ohio, and even more could pile up in New York City and the Boston area with winds of up to 40 mph (65 kmh).

Across the country, the storm was a factor in about 2,000 flight cancellations and 2,100 flight delays, largely in Chicago, according to the online site FlightStats.

There were blizzard-like conditions in Chicago as the storm knocked out power to nearly 20,000 customers in Illinois.

Bitter cold weather is forecast to follow the snow across the country. In Grand Island, Nebraska, the temperature plunged to 7 Fahrenheit (-14 Celsius) by mid-afternoon on Sunday.

The snowstorm was expected to be the most far-reaching of the season to date, stretching from Nebraska to Maine, according to the National Weather Service.

Forecasters also said the storm was moving unusually slowly, meaning accumulations of between 10in and 14in of snow are possible for parts of northern Illinois, Indiana and northwest Ohio. Similar amounts of snow are expected for the north-east later Sunday and throughout Monday.

“This is going to be a very high-impact storm for a large swath of the eastern half of the country,” weather service meteorologist Ricky Castro said.

The most intense period of snow in the mid-west was expected to hit Sunday evening, right around Super Bowl game time, meaning the roads could be treacherous for those heading to Super Bowl parties. Potential wind gusts of up to 40 mph were expected, so drivers could face poor visibility and snarling snow drifts.

Parts of New England are still recovering from a blizzard that threw down a record 34.5 inches of snow in the central Massachusetts city of Worcester, where dump trucks and front-end loaders had to be brought in to move snow.

The Monday and Tuesday storm dumped two feet of snow on Boston 19in on Providence, Rhode Island. Another foot or so could spell particular trouble for snow-clearing operations in Boston’s narrow streets.

The weather service said that many parts of New England could get between 8 and 14in of snow and that parts of western Massachusetts and Connecticut could get as much as 16in.

A winter storm warning was in effect for New York City starting at 7 pm. Sunday and was expected to remain in effect until 6 pm. Monday.

The small town of Henniker, New Hampshire, will have to find a way to clear the snow without the majority of its plows. Nearly its entire fleet of snow-clearing equipment — five plows and a road grader — was destroyed in a fire on Friday night at a garage.

“This puts the town in a bad spot,” Henniker fire chief Steve Burritt told the Concord Monitor newspaper. “The town has a serious problem for snow removal. Not that there isn’t a solution, but it’s going to be a challenge.”

Investigators said the fire apparently originated in the engine of one of the dump trucks used as snow plows and spread. Officials estimate the damage could exceed $1m.

The only heavy equipment spared — two pickup trucks and a front-end loader — was parked outside the garage. No injuries were reported.