The South got an early taste of winter, but the Northeast didn’t have to wait much longer.
The same weather system that dumped snow Friday on much of the Southeast — leaving a foot in some pockets of the Southeast — marched up the East Coast, dropping several inches of snowfall over the weekend.
“This is the first significant winter storm for the East Coast,” CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam said. “Once this storm moves off the coast, it will have blanketed a swath of snow stretching roughly 2,000 miles from the Deep South to the New England coast.”
Snow began falling Saturday morning in Washington, then up to New York City and through the Northeast. The storm’s impact varied along the path, with Washington and New York having under 3 inches of snow, while Boston and Philadelphia saw more than 4 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
The storm is expected to drop an additional 1-2 inches of snow in Boston and 2-4 inches in Maine on Sunday, Van Dam said.
As the snowstorm moves away from the Southeast, it’ll leave a series of temperatures well below average for most areas across the region.
A man was electrocuted in Atlanta after making contact with a downed power line, police said.
The plunging temperatures and wintry precipitation affected hundreds of flights, with Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines announcing more than 1,000 flight cancellations Friday and an additional 375 on Saturday. Other airlines, including Southwest and United, said weather conditions will disrupt flights in the South and Northeast.
Wintry conditions weren’t quite finished for Georgia or the Carolinas. Parts of those states saw between 10 and 18 inches of snow by Sunday morning.
Whiteouts, blackouts
In the South, flurries started tumbling down Thursday night in south Texas, which rarely gets snow.
Snow and ice led to hazardous driving conditions overnight Friday in cities such as Atlanta, but temperatures will be warm enough for it to melt Saturday afternoon, Van Dam said.
Mountainous areas of the South reported the heaviest accumulations Friday, the weather service said.
Atlanta received about 3-4 inches of snow, while other parts of northern Georgia received up to a foot, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 260,000 customers were without power in the Southeast due to the storm, utility companies said.
In Alabama, 5 inches of snow had fallen by Friday in Birmingham, knocking out power and leaving thousands of people in the dark.
In Mississippi’s capital, the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport got at least 4.9 inches, the city’s largest snowfall since January 1982, CNN affiliate WLBT reported.
Meanwhile, another storm is making its way through the Great Lakes area this weekend, the weather service said.
