Storm Batters NY, New England, Dumping More Than A Foot Of Snow; 350,000 Lose Power [View all]

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, February 8, 11:02 PM

BOSTON — A storm that forecasters warned could be a blizzard for the history books, with a potential for up to 3 feet of snow, clobbered the New York-to-Boston corridor on Friday, grounding flights and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of customers across the Northeast.

By Friday evening, more than 14 inches of snow had fallen in Belmont, Mass., just northwest of Boston, and more than 13 inches covered parts of northeastern Connecticut. Throughout the Northeast, about 350,000 homes and businesses lost electricity as wet, heavy snow, freezing rain and howling winds caused havoc.

Earlier, as meteorologists warned of the impending blizzard conditions, shoppers from New Jersey to Maine crowded into supermarkets and hardware stores to buy food, snow shovels, flashlights and generators, something that became a precious commodity after Superstorm Sandy in October. Others gassed up their cars, another lesson learned all too well after Sandy. Across much of New England, schools closed well ahead of the first snowflakes.

“This is a storm of major proportions,” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said. “Stay off the roads. Stay home.”

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/snowstorm-hits-new-york-and-new-england-could-rewrite-record-books-with-up-to-3-feet-of-snow/2013/02/08/df75f1ba-724d-11e2-b3f3-b263d708ca37_story.html

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