CHICAGO — A fearsome winter storm spread a smothering shroud of white over nearly half the nation Wednesday, snarling transportation from Oklahoma to New England, burying parts of the Midwest under 2 feet of snow and laying down dangerously heavy ice in the Northeast that was too much for some buildings to bear.
Tens of millions of people stayed home. The hardy few who ventured out faced howling winds and blowing snow. Chicago’s 20.2 inches of snow was the city’s third-largest amount on record. In New York’s Central Park, the pathways were iced over.
The storm that resulted from two clashing air masses was, if not unprecedented, rare for its size and ferocity.
“The jet stream up in the atmosphere was like the engine, and the warm air was the fuel,” said Gino Izzo, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
Across the huge storm’s path, commuters struggled against drifts 3 and 4 feet deep on eerily silent streets, some of which had not seen a plow’s blade since the snow started a day earlier. Parkas and ski goggles normally reserved for the slopes became essential for getting to work.
“This is probably the most snow I’ve seen in the last 34 years,” joked 34-year-old Chicagoan Michael George. “I saw some people cross-country skiing on my way to the train.”
Although skies were beginning to clear by midafternoon over much of the nation’s midsection, the storm promised to leave a blast of bitter cold in its wake. Overnight temperatures in the upper Midwest were expected to fall to minus 20 in some areas, with wind chills as low as minus 30.
The system was blamed for at least 12 deaths, including a homeless man who burned to death on New York’s Long Island as he tried to light cans of cooking fuel and an Oklahoma City woman who was killed while being pulled behind a truck on a sled that hit a guard rail.
Airport operations slowed to a crawl nationwide, and flight cancellations reached 13,000 for the week, making this system the most disruptive so far this winter. A massive post-Christmas blizzard led to about 10,000 cancellations.
In the winter-weary Northeast, thick ice caused several structures to collapse, including a gas-station canopy on Long Island and an airplane hangar near Boston. In at least two places, workers heard the structures beginning to crack and narrowly escaped.
In Middletown, Conn., the entire third floor of a building failed, littering the street with bricks and snapping two trees. Acting Fire Marshal Al Santostefano said two workers fled when they heard a cracking sound.
“It’s like a bomb scene,” Santostefano said. “Thank God they left the building when they did.”
More than a half-dozen states began digging out from up to a foot of snow, which left roads treacherous and hundreds of thousands of homes without power.
Chicago public schools canceled classes for a second day. And the city’s iconic Lake Shore Drive remained shut down, nearly a day after drivers abandoned hundreds of snowbound vehicles. The road looked as if rush hour had been stopped in time. Bulldozers worked Wednesday to clear snow from around the cars, which tow trucks then plucked out one by one.
