About 25 centimeters of snow cover and 56 kilometers of wind gusts per hour is expected in the urban area of northern Virginia and central Maryland. The National Weather Service has issued snowstorm alerts for the region, northern Alabama and southern Tennessee, as well as Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and West Virginia.
More than half of flights at Washington’s Ronald Reagan, Thurgood Marshall and Dulles International Airports have been canceled or delayed. According to the US company FlightAware, which provides flight data. And the situation was not much better at the three major airports in New York: a quarter of flights there were canceled or delayed.
President Joe Biden’s helicopter wasn’t allowed to take off either, so he had to drive to the White House from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he arrived after the weekend in Delaware.
Monday’s White House press conference was also called off in light of the blizzard in the capital, although President Biden’s other public appearances were not postponed.
In Washington, D.C., federal government offices remained closed Monday and school holidays were ordered in the capital and parts of Maryland and Virginia due to heavy snowfall. Many vaccination stations in the capital and in the two member states also remained closed due to bad weather.
On the East Coast, more than half a million households have experienced power outages. There have been a number of road accidents on slippery roads.
The New Year also began with snowfall in other US states. Snow was also breaking in northwest Washington state and Oregon, and heavy roads and severe storms had to close rural roads. They also woke up to the floating snow in South Florida.
COVER PHOTO: A woman walks past the Capitol Building in Washington Jan. 3, 2022 in heavy snow. MTI / AP / J. Scott Applewhite
