UA “potentially deadly” snowstorm swept across the northeastern United States on Saturday with terrible gusts of wind, paralyzing the daily life of 70 million inhabitants and possibly causing the death of a motorist in New York.
Much of the New England region is under a blizzard warning, dubbed a “cyclone bomb” by US weather, while more than 30cm of snow is expected in the big city of Boston.
In New York, rare passers-by in Times Square – Manhattan’s mythical crossroads covered with tens of centimeters of snow – fell stunned on the famous “naked cowboy”, alias Robert Burck, a street artist who plays the guitar and sings whatever the climate.
As usual, he was wearing only his underpants, his hat and his boots, impassive despite the impressive currents of air beating the giant screens which formed a halo of scarlet light in the blizzard.
“Magical and Freezing”
“Times Square is both magical and freezing,” Bendit Almavit, a New York resident, told AFPTV.
In Brooklyn, in the trendy district of Cobble Hill, the almost deserted sidewalks are covered with at least 30 cm of snow and many businesses are closed. “Happy Snow Day!” (“Happy snow day!”), Says a resident of the district, all smiles, leaving one of the small brick buildings typical of the district, with white roofs.
New York Mayor Eric Adams filmed himself in the Bronx neighborhood, then on the mythical and free ferry between Manhattan and Staten Island, urging his fellow citizens to stay at home and warning that “Mother Nature tends to do this what she wants”.
The gigantic metro network of the megalopolis of nine million inhabitants operates more or less normally and serves, as with every bad weather, as a refuge for the thousands of homeless people in this city with deep socio-economic inequalities.
Frozen to death
North of the New York metropolis, on Long Island, 60 cm should accumulate in the evening according to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul.
She warned of “a very serious” and “potentially deadly” storm.
Commuter train lines are at a standstill there and a woman was found lifeless, possibly frozen to death in her car, Nassau County elected official Bruce Blakeman said on local radio.
In the neighboring and upscale county of Westchester, snowplows have been working since dawn to clear the roads and lanes that wind between middle-class houses enveloped in snow.
A state of emergency has been declared for the states of New York and New Jersey and Governor Hochul asked to “avoid travel at all costs” but still fill cars with gasoline, water and of blankets.
The National Weather Service (NWS) announced wind gusts of 80 to 120 km / h and warned of “near impossible travel conditions” in the northeastern United States.
The NWS also predicts polar temperatures in the night from Saturday to Sunday and power cuts, usual every winter when the power of the wind or the weight of the snow tears the power lines. Some 117,000 homes in Massachusetts were without power according to the poweroutage.us website around 4:00 p.m. (21:00 GMT).
Frozen iguanas in Florida
As for airports in the northeast, some 3,500 flights have been canceled for Saturday and more than a thousand already for Sunday, arriving or departing from the country, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware.
Met in Manhattan, Sophie and Hervé Galy, French tourists, say they “were lucky” because they “arrived” on Friday and are due to leave on Tuesday.
In Boston, the new mayor Michelle Wu had warned Saturday morning of a “historic and” very bad “storm and the inhabitants of Massachusetts rushed to the stores to buy shovels in order to clear the snow from the sidewalks, an obligation.
In this state, Eric Calessandro, a resident of Marshfield, has had no power since midday but told AFP that he had launched his “8,000 watt generator to heat his house” where he “stored water and food”.
Even in the south, in usually tropical Florida, frost warnings have been issued with the risk of knocking the famous iguanas weighing up to nine kg from their trees.
This snowstorm is already the second of the year in eastern North America, after the one that had traveled in early January in regions ranging from the state of Georgia to Quebec.
29/01/2022 22:30:20 – Boston (United States) (AFP) – © 2022 AFP