PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A fierce weekend storm dropped record snowfall over the weekend and stranded travelers up the coast from Virginia to New England, but its timing helped minimize headache-inducing work commutes and left many with the prospect of a very white Christmas.
Residents throughout the mid-Atlantic and Northeast mostly holed up for the weekend, then dug out from up to 2 feet of snow to find sunny, mostly calm skies and a blanket of white unspoiled by car exhaust and passers-by.
Neighbors shoveling snow in front of their homes Sunday on the east side of Providence shrugged it off as a mild inconvenience that had the decency to come on a weekend.
“It’s less of a disruption,” said Chloe Kline, a 35-year-old musician. “I don’t have to get out to go to school or work or anything like that.”
To the south, others struggled with the aftermath of the storm that stranded hundreds of motorists in Virginia and knocked out power to thousands but could have been much worse.
The storm dropped 16 inches of snow Saturday on Reagan National Airport outside Washington — the most ever recorded there for a December day — and gave southern New Jersey its highest single-storm snowfall totals in nearly four years.
The National Weather Service said the storm gave Philadelphia, which began keeping records in 1884, its second-largest snowfall: 23.2 inches. In the Philadelphia suburb of Medford, N.J., 24 inches was recorded.
The 13.4 inches that fell Sunday at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, just south of Providence, easily eclipsed the date’s previous record — 6.3 inches in 1995, according to the National Weather Service.
Around New York City, the brunt of the storm hit Long Island, with whiteout conditions and 26.3 inches in Upton, a record since measurements began in 1949. Nearly 11 inches of snow fell on New York City, and the storm could be the worst the city has seen since about 26 inches fell in February 2006, National Weather Service meteorologist Patrick Ma loit said.
