Reuters/Chicago
A huge winter storm pummelled the US yesterday, bringing parts of the Midwest to a standstill, delivering a wintry blow to the Northeast, and disrupting businesses, flights and other transport.Workers clear snow from around the Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park in Chicago
Major automakers shut down plants in six Midwestern states and Ontario, and were just a fraction of the commerce that felt the storm’s wrath.
Grain and livestock movement were also paralysed in many areas. Wheat prices rose on worries that extreme cold that will follow the storm could damage crops. Citrus growers in south Texas also feared extensive damage from a hard freeze.
The storm, touching some 30 states and a third of the US population, stretched from New Mexico to Maine as it moved toward the northeast where an ice storm wreaked havoc on New York City’s morning commuters.
Chicago was set to get its biggest snowfall in more than 40 years. Some 20in (54cm) of snow was forecast to pile up by late yesterday. Snowfalls of a foot (30cm) or more were recorded from Oklahoma City to Kansas City and Indianapolis.
The website flightaware.com, which tracks airline cancellation information, said more than 5,200 flights had been cancelled yesterday. That followed thousands of flight cancellations on Tuesday.
"We’re totally out of Chicago today; 920 cancellations in and out,” said American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith.
Power was out for more than 375,000 customers from Texas to New England, and into Canada.
Treacherous ice, rather than deep snow, hit New York City. The heavily used commuter rail service between New Jersey and New York was suspended due to ice buildup on the overhead power lines, authorities said. Public transport in other major cities, including Boston, was also disrupted.
The huge two-day storm delivered its strongest punch to the Midwest, dumping as much as 3in (7.6 cm) of snow an hour on Chicago during most of the night along with winds of up to 40mph (65kph).
Among the storm-affected businesses, large and small, Abbott Laboratories, a major pharmaceutical company, closed its headquarters north of Chicago yesterday.
Major interstate highways in the Plains and Midwest were closed and a state of emergency was declared across the area.
Major railroads, including Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Norfolk Southern, which transport commodities across the US, said snow and ice was slowing them down.
"The impact is widespread just as the weather conditions are,” said BNSF spokesman Steven Forsberg.
Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan was closed as snow drifted waist deep over the road.
The third biggest city in the US could end up with the largest snowfall since 1967, city officials said.
"We will continue to do everything we can to protect the safety of the residents of this city as we deal with the impact of this historic storm,” Chicago city chief of staff Ray Orozco told an early morning news conference.
In the Northeast, already facing a wintry mix of snow and sleet, the storm was expected to dump 12-18in (30-45cm) of snow on Boston through yesterday.
"We have skeletal crew. This weather has been brutal,” said John Canally, investment strategist at LPL Financial in Boston. "Our Boston office is closed, but we are still doing our regular morning routines. Those who couldn’t make it in are working remotely from home.”
Snow was not the only hazard.
"The thing we’re most fearful of is freezing rain. It could turn the roads into ice rinks pretty quickly,” Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge said.
The storm wreaked havoc on agricultural operations, threatening the dormant winter wheat crop and livestock, and slowing the processing and transportation of agricultural commodities.
Forecaster Accuweather said some winter wheat crops in the Plains states were at risk from cold weather, while those in the Midwest at least had an protective blanket of snow.
Texas, the second largest US producer of grapefruit and the third largest of Valencia oranges, braced for crop damage from the cold snap could push fruit prices higher at the grocery store.
"We’re pretty much going to concede that we will probably lose the rest of the fruit crop,” said Ted Prukop of Texas Citrus Mutual.
As the blizzard moved northeast, a dangerous deep freeze followed in its wake from Montana and the mountain states through the Plains and south to Oklahoma.
The storm lost a lot of its force in Canada, but it still sparked snowfall warnings from the maritime provinces along the east coast through to Niagara Falls, in the central province of Ontario.
In Toronto, where forecasters had predicted the worst storm in at least two years, only 4in (10cm) of snow had fallen by the morning and the storm was expected to abate by the afternoon.
At Toronto’s Pearson International Airport some 300 flights were cancelled out of the 1,200 scheduled for the day, most of them to and from major US cities east of Chicago.