Winter isn’t going quietly.
The I-95 Corridor got pummeled Wednesday with another major Nor’easter — the fourth to strike the region in the past four weeks — on the first full day of spring.
Approximately 75 million people are under winter weather alerts today from Indiana to Maine, and more than 4,000 flights have already been cancelled.
“Travel will be impacted because of the heavy, wet nature of the snow, so anyone trying to shovel out a driveway will feel like they’re shoveling cement,” said NBC News meteorologist Sherri Pugh. “Some people may have arrived to work this morning but may have trouble leaving. New York City is just now getting in the thick of it [with the afternoon commute yet to come].”
The storm is the product of a weather system that previously vexed the South: Hail in Texas on Sunday, tornadoes in Alabama on Monday, and severe storms in Florida on Tuesday, later developing into the Nor’easter blanketing the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to New England in snow.
Many in Northeast were wearily bringing out snow shovels once again. Boston — which had already dug out from under 57.2 inches snowfall this season, 15 inches more than average — is facing another 4 to 7 inches by the time the latest storm peters out Thursday morning.
This time around, the heaviest snowfall is expected between Southeast Pennsylvania and Connecticut. New York City, where the temperatures dipped blow freezing in Central Park, is expected to get 6 to 12 inches of snow and wind gusts of up to 40 miles per hour — with the worst of it expected just as the evening rush hour gets underway.
New York Mayor Bill De Blasio encouraged workers, “if you don’t need to be out, don’t be out. And if you are at work, try to leave work early.”
And by midnight, Washington, D.C. is likely to double the 4 inches of snowfall city previously accumulated over the entire winter.
“It’s certainly been a rough winter for the Northeast,” said Pugh. “Everybody’s had a good bit of snow on this side of the country.”
Meanwhile on the West Coast, Central and Southern California were getting drenched in torrential rains, with forecasts predicting between 3 to 5 inches of precipitation through Friday.
The last time the region endured four Nor’easters in such close succession was in 2015, when four storms hit between Jan. 26 and Feb. 15.