New York shuts schools, cancels flights as major storm hits US

New York ordered drivers off the road and shut down schools on Monday, while residents braced for a massive snowstorm hitting the United States northeast.

Tens of millions of Americans from the US capital, Washington, to the northern state of Maine have prepared for up to two feet (60 centimeters) of snow forecast in some areas.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said light snow and “freezing fog” with lows of 30F (-1C) were recorded in New York in the early hours of Monday, February 23, 2026.

NWS also predicted blizzard conditions would “quickly materialize” from Maryland up to southeastern New England, making travel “extremely treacherous.”

It said snow could fall at a rate of two to three inches per hour at the peak of the storm, with nearly 54 million people in its path.

Early Monday morning, the storm had already begun to hit New York, slashing visibility to the extent that the skyscrapers of Wall Street were barely visible from the adjacent borough of Brooklyn.

Power outages are likely due to heavy snow and strong wind gusts, forecasters said. Just after 01:39 am local time (0639 GMT) on Monday, nearly 80,000 customers were without power in the state of New Jersey, according to tracking website poweroutage.us.

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Meanwhile, more than 5,000 flights have been cancelled, data from the tracker FlightAware showed early Monday.

In New York, which has more than eight million residents, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said streets, highways and bridges would be shut down from 9:00 p.m. on Sunday until noon Monday.

“New York City has not faced a storm of this scale in the last decade,” he said, explaining the state of emergency.

“We are asking New Yorkers to avoid all non-essential travel,” Mamdani told AFP.

The ban will not apply to essential workers or New Yorkers needing to travel due to emergencies.

The Star