Flight Delays Pile Up in Washington as Snowstorm Tracks East
As of 3:45 p.m. in Washington, almost 800 flights had been canceled within, into or out of the U.S.
(Bloomberg) -- Washington D.C. could get another four inches (10 centimeters) of snow by late Sunday from a storm that’s already caused hundreds of flight cancellations and several deaths as it cuts a wide swath across the U.S. from St. Louis to the mid-Atlantic.
By early Sunday afternoon, Washington’s Reagan National Airport had recorded 5.4 inches of snow, AccuWeather reported. The nation’s capital hadn’t received more than 4.1 inches from a single snowstorm since January 2016.
Totals could reach 10 inches before the sun returns Monday and temperatures rise into the 40s Fahrenheit by Tuesday, said Rob St. Pierre, a meteorologist with Hometown Forecast Services in Nashua, New Hampshire.
“They will get off-and-on snow today and then it will clear out late tonight,” said St. Pierre, who provides forecasts for Bloomberg Radio. “There will be sunshine Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.”
As of 3:45 p.m. in Washington, almost 800 flights had been canceled within, into or out of the U.S., the majority from the three Washington-area airports -- Reagan, Dulles International and Baltimore/Washington International -- according to FlightAware, a Houston-based airline tracking service.
Earlier, St. Louis got 10.2 inches, its biggest fall since 2014, with some parts of Missouri getting more than a foot, according to the National Weather Service. Significant flight delays were experienced into and out of St. Louis on Saturday.
Knocked-out power lines resulted from the wintry mix of snow and ice in the mid-Atlantic, and hundreds of car accidents were reported resulting in a handful of deaths from Missouri to Virginia.
The slow-moving storm, the biggest in the region so far this winter, is still hovering over much of northern Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and southern New Jersey. Further south, the western Carolinas and southern Virginia have seen freezing rain.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam on Saturday declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm’s snow, ice and high winds. The declaration allows the state to mobilize resources and deploy people and equipment to assist in response and recovery efforts.
Dominion Energy Inc. showed more than 13,000 customers in Virginia without power at mid-afternoon, mostly in Richmond and areas to the south.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Mark Niquette
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