Thousands face flight cancellations as winter storms wreak havoc across US, blizzard warnings issued

Two substantial winter storms are causing havoc across the United States, grounding hundreds of flights and resulting in over a foot of snowfall in the Hudson Valley, New York. Widespread blizzard warnings have been issued throughout the Great Plains. The initial storm is forecast to continue to deposit substantial snowfall in Boston and New England, predicts the National Weather Service. Numerous regions to the north and west of NYC, particularly the upper Hudson River Valley, have received between 6 and 12 inches of snowfall.

"Poughkeepsie's snow accumulation was at a foot," informed Greg Carbin, the head of the US Weather Prediction Center, "as was Orange County in New York. Port Jervis registered 13 inches." Meanwhile, NYC was somewhat spared, with Manhattan’s Central Park mostly experiencing rain. As the eastern storm begins to recede, another storm sweeps across the western states prompting storm warnings from Arizona to Illinois and a blizzard warning for New Mexico and Colorado.

These two snowstorms are responsible for 692 flight cancellations across the US as of early Sunday morning, with the primary areas affected being Boston, Newark, Seattle, and Chicago as per FlightAware, an airline tracking organization. Passenger rail carrier Amtrak has also cancelled several trains bound for Boston and across the Midwest. Almost 12,000 customers in Massachusetts, specifically in Middlesex County, were without power as per PowerOutage.us.

On the bright side, Central Park in New York only got a dusting of 0.2 inch of snow, maintaining its record for the longest streak without at least an inch of snow. As of Saturday, the record-breaking dry spell had lasted for 692 days, surpassing the previous record of 383 days that ended on March 21, 1998, according to meteorological records.

A look ahead reveals that the storm from the west is set to bring heavy snow throughout the Midwest, including up to 9 inches just west of Chicago on Monday and Tuesday. This is also expected to cause floods in the eastern US as rain falls on snow. To complicate matters, 1 to 3 inches of rainfall are expected on Tuesday and Wednesday in parts of New York and New Jersey, already hit with heavy snow, which is bound to exacerbate issues with rivers and streams, according to Carbin. He projected that in a few hours, the snowfall will recede in Upstate New York but continue in Boston and New England for the rest of Sunday.