NEW YORK: Millions of East Coast commuters returned to work Monday over slick roads and icy sidewalks after a weekend winter storm dropped record snowfall, interrupted holiday shopping and stranded travelers.
The storm crept up the coast on Saturday and Sunday, walloping states from the mid-Atlantic to New England, causing hundreds of delayed or canceled flights, widespread power outages and treacherous driving conditions. The weather was blamed for at least seven deaths, including a snowmobile driver who crashed head-on into a horse-drawn buggy in Pennsylvania’s Amish country.
Meanwhile, airports in the Northeast that were jammed up this weekend were working their way back to normal. On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration was reporting that all major airports on the East Coast had average flight delays of less than 15 minutes.
Still, three major airports in the New York City area were expecting an unusually busy holiday travel week as many who were stranded by the cancelation of 1,200 flights over the weekend try to make it to their destinations.
Despite the storm’s powerful punch, many took solace in the fact that the timing could have been worse, even if it left people trapped in their homes all weekend. Thomas Standers, of New Rochelle, N.Y., was feeding dozens of Christmas cards into a mailbox at the train station in Pelham early Monday. “If we hadn’t been stuck inside all weekend, these would never have gotten done,” he said.
“Now we have a fighting chance they’ll get there by Christmas.” Many schools and offices were closed Monday, making traffic a little lighter on slow-moving roads and lessening the strain on beleaguered transit systems.
Highways were largely clear, but secondary roads remained treacherous.
