Snowstorm topples East Coast records
Residents dig out after weather system passes
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A fierce weekend storm dropped record snowfall and stranded travelers up the coast from Virginia to New England, but its timing helped minimize headache-inducing work commutes and left many with the prospect of a very white Christmas.
Residents throughout the mid-Atlantic and Northeast mostly holed up for the weekend, then dug out from as much as 2 feet of snow to find sunny, mostly calm skies.
To the south, others struggled with the aftermath of the storm that stranded hundreds of motorists in Virginia and knocked out power to thousands but could have been much worse.
The storm dropped 16 inches of snow Saturday on Reagan National Airport outside Washington – the most ever recorded there for a single December day – and gave southern New Jersey its highest single-storm snowfall totals in nearly four years.
The National Weather Service said the storm gave Philadelphia, which began keeping records in 1884, its second-largest snowfall: 23.2 inches. Even more was recorded in the Philadelphia suburb of Medford, N.J., at 24 inches.
The 13.4 inches that fell Sunday at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, just south of Providence, easily eclipsed the date’s previous record of 6.3 inches, set in 1995, according to the National Weather Service.
Around New York City, the brunt of the storm hit Long Island, with whiteout conditions and 26.3 inches in Upton, a record since measurements began in 1949.