Big snowstorm lashes eastern U.S. disrupting travel

NEW YORK, Jan 4 (APP):Hurricane-force winds and heavy snow swept into the U.S. Northeast on Thursday, shutting down schools and government offices and snarling travel as work crews scrambled to clear roads before plummeting temperatures turn snow into treacherous ice.
Called by weather forecasters “Bomb Cyclone”, it is dumping blinding snow hurled by wind guests as strong as 60 miles-per-hour. The storm is the product of a rapid plunge in barometric pressure that brings fast heavy snowfall and high winds.
Blizzard warnings were in place along the coast from North Carolina to Maine, with the National Weather Service forecasting winds as high as 70 miles per hour that may bring down tree limbs and knock out power.
More than a foot (30 cm) of snow was forecast for Boston and coastal areas in northern New England.
The cold has been blamed for at least nine deaths over the past few days, including two homeless people in Houston.
More than 3,000 airline flights within, into or out of the United States were canceled ahead of the storm’s arrival on Thursday. At New York’s three major airports and Boston’s Logan International, as many as three out of four flights were called off, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.
Passenger train operator Amtrak was running reduced service in the Northeast, while mass-transit systems in major metropolitan areas, including New York and Boston, remained open.
Some 65,000 homes and businesses in the Northeast were without power early on Thursday, though that number was expected to rise as the storm intensifies across the region.
That raised fears that people would be left without power and heat on Friday and during the weekend when temperatures are forecast to drop sharply.