News / Winter storm freezes US east coast transport systems

Transport activities along the US Eastern Seaboard ground to a halt yesterday as the coast from Maryland to Maine fell under blizzard warnings.

Thousands of flights were cancelled and surface transport hit with travel bans as a powerful winter storm buried the coastal region under up to 27 inches of snow and left more than 600,000 people without power.

According to FlightAware, more than 5,711 flights were cancelled – other sources rnoted more than 7,000 – more than 19% of all US flights scheduled for yesterday.

New York’s JFK led the list of affected airports, followed by fellow area airports LaGuardia and Newark. Boston Logan, Philadelphia International and Washington’s Reagan National came next in the litany of flight cancellations.

By late afternoon, American Airlines announced it had resumed operations at Philadelphia and Reagan, and was expecting to restart flights at LaGuardia, JFK, and Boston by mid-morning today. Delta also signalled plans to resume flying at those three airports, plus Newark, today.

Operations at east coast gateways were also affected. The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey announced that all terminals and depots at the twin ports were closed; APM Terminals indicated that it would open, at the earliest, by 7pm this evening.

At the port of Baltimore, Seagirt Marine Terminal and Ports America Chesapeake operations at Dundalk Marine Terminal are closed.

Poor visibility and rapid build-up of snow (accumulating at two inches per hour) paralysed road traffic – seven states declared a state of emergency and travel bans were in effect in some areas.

Home delivery and parcel services were suspended in many areas. FedEx and UPS put advisories on their websites notifying customers that severe winter weather was impacting travel and transport, and that they were providing pick-up and delivery services “as local conditions and restrictions allow”.

According to one report, more than 3,300 zip codes across Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont had no FedEx Express service, while 34 of its service centres were closed.

New York City officials declared the end of the storm at 4.30pm, but it will take some time for operations to ramp up again. Data analytics firm Cirrium warned late yesterday that 7% of US flights scheduled for today were expected to be cancelled.