Bajer: Storm heads to New England after D.C. no-show

বৃহস্পতিবার, ৭ মার্চ, ২০১৩

Storm heads to New England after D.C. no-show

Steven Senne / AP

Ocean waves crash over a seawall and into houses along the coast in Scituate, Mass., Thursday, March 7, 2013. A winter storm brought strong winds to coastal areas in the state. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

By Matthew DeLuca and Erin McClam, NBC News

A winter storm parked itself off the coast of New England on Thursday and spun bands of snow and high winds back over the Northeast, the beginning of a two-day onslaught that could cause coastal flooding and complicate the recovery from last month's blizzard.

Forecasters said Boston could get up to 6 inches of snow and New York as much as 3 inches. Interior Massachusetts could be hit harder ? up to a foot of snow. The system was expected to hang out through Saturday morning.

?It is going to be a prolonged event,? said Tom Niziol, a winter weather expert at The Weather Channel.

Along the Massachusetts coast, which was hammered by a blizzard four weeks ago, people braced for surging seas. Homeowners were encouraged to evacuate. Photos showed two-story-high waves crashing against seawalls.

?We still have remnants of the last storm in the yard,? Paula Polasky, who lives in the coastal town of Scituate, told NBC affiliate WHDH in Boston before packing up and leaving. ?I?m not going to take any chances this time.?

Parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio woke up to as much as 6 inches of snow Thursday, with the possibility of more in the Philadelphia suburbs into Friday, NBC Philadelphia reported.

TODAY's Al Roker reports on the winter storm that has already brought snow and dangerous winds to much of the East Coast and is continuing to travel north into New England.

The system was a no-show in Washington, where predictions of the worst snowfall in two years came to nothing more than a slushy annoyance. It was far more impressive to the west: Parts of Virginia got 20 inches of snow.

Temperatures were expected to eke up in the storm?s wake, with highs nearing 50 degrees in Washington on Thursday. People in the nation's capital didn?t even need to break out snow shovels after the storm left only a scattering of flakes.

Federal offices closed, schools were shut and Congress postponed hearings on Wednesday as the city braced for what people online dubbed Snowquester, after the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester.

?They just say that it might snow and the whole city shuts down,? Sheri Sable told The Associated Press as she walked her dogs in a slight drizzle in Washington on Thursday.

At least four people were killed and 1,100 flights were canceled on Tuesday as the storm moved over Chicago.

Snow and wind knocked out power for about 250,000 homes and businesses on Wednesday.

There were still 112,000 customers without power Thursday across six states and the District of Columbia. Most of those were in Virginia. About 300 flights were canceled Thursday because of weather, including 126 at New York?s LaGuardia airport.