COLUMBIA, Conn. — A wintry storm responsible for deaths on the plains and in the Midwest blasted the Northeast on Thursday, dumping snow and sleet and clogging some of the nation’s most heavily traveled highways.
Snowfall in the region ranged from 2 inches to a foot in some places. Schools, businesses and government agencies in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut closed early.
The resulting exodus choked highways and streets. Authorities reported hundreds of mostly minor accidents throughout the region. Some vehicles were stranded along roadways, preventing plows from getting through.
Susan Randolph of Bolton said it took her an hour to make her normal 20-minute commute from her job at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
“A lot of drivers seem to have forgotten their snow-driving skills,” she said.
Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s vehicle got stuck in the mess, crawling along the highway at 5-10 mph for two hours in what should have been a 30-minute drive.
“Stay home,” she advised. “Go home, prop your feet up, watch the news.”
While the traffic crawled along the interstates, it also slowed at Northeast airports.
There were delays up to three hours for arriving flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, where more than 200 flights had been canceled by late afternoon, officials said.
Elsewhere, Boston’s Logan International reported more than 100 flights canceled, as did Bradley International near Hartford. No major problems were reported at New York’s airports.
The storm has been blamed for at least 36 deaths, mostly in traffic accidents, since it developed last weekend.
A 23-year-old woman died Thursday morning when her pickup skidded and flipped over on a snowy highway in Waverly, N.Y. Police said Jessica Rose Nash was partially ejected despite wearing a seat belt.
Crews worked to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people left in the dark in the storm’s ice-coated wake.
In Oklahoma, about 330,000 homes and businesses still were without power Thursday, officials said. In Missouri, about 64,000 people were without electricity, including roughly 32,000 in the Kansas City and St. Joseph areas, state officials said.
Sunshine and milder temperatures on Thursday helped cleanup efforts in much of the plains, but another storm approaching from the west could dump heavy snow on parts of Oklahoma today.
