Blizzard warnings were issued Saturday for New York City, New Jersey and coastal communities along the East Coast as a late-winter storm set to arrive on Sunday threatened to make a mess of the start of a new week.
The National Weather Service increased its assessment of the potential severity of a storm that was projected to be less ferocious only days earlier.
The weather service said 1 to 2 feet (about 30 to 61 centimeters) of snow was possible in many areas as it issued blizzard warnings for New York City, Long Island, southern Connecticut and coastal communities in New Jersey and Delaware. Flooding was also possible in parts of New York and New Jersey, the weather service said.
“While we do get plenty of these nor’easters that produce heavy snow and strong impacts, it’s been several years since we saw one of this magnitude across this large of a region in this very populated part of the country,” said Cody Snell, a meteorologist at the service’s Weather Prediction Center.
Snell said the storm will arrive Sunday morning in areas around Washington, D.C. before stretching toward Philadelphia and New York City and reaching Boston late Monday evening.
The weather service said the storm could begin as rainfall in some places before worsening, with the heaviest snowfall expected Sunday night and as much as 2 inches (5 centimeters) of snow an hour at times in some areas before tampering off by Monday afternoon.
The weather service warned that the storm, with steady winds of 25 to 35 mph (40 to 56 kph) would “make travel dangerous, if not impossible. Scattered downed tree limbs and power outages possible due to snow load and strong winds.”
The storm approached just as the icy remains of a snowstorm that struck the region weeks earlier were finally melting away.
On Saturday, officials in Atlantic City, New Jersey, urged residents and casino visitors to stay off streets during the storm, especially in low-lying neighborhoods prone to flooding.
“I could go on and on probably with a good two dozen streets where we know we will get water and there will be snow on top of that, said Scott Evans, the city’s fire chief and emergency management coordinator. “So you won’t be able to see it until it’s too late, so therefore please stay at home.”