Northeast Storm Knocks Out Power, Cancels Flights

(Bloomberg) — A powerful winter storm has knocked out power to 600,000 homes and businesses across the Northeast and grounded more than 10,000 flights through Tuesday, even as the worst is over for New York City.

Manhattan’s Central Park recorded about 20 inches (50 centimeters) of snow from Sunday through Monday. Islip on Long Island received more than 22 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Providence, Rhode Island, broke its all-time record for a single snow storm with 32.8 inches, the National Weather Service said. The old record was set from Feb. 6-7 during the Blizzard of 1978 when 28.6 inches fell.

By Monday afternoon, the snow had tapered off across New York and conditions were improving, said Jim Connolly, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

“The worst is over for New York,” Connolly said. “Any significant accumulations are over.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani lifted the directive that closed streets, highways and bridges to most traffic. City schools will be open for in-person instruction Tuesday.

The storm, however, still disrupted transportation across the Northeast and beyond. Amtrak suspended service between New York and Boston, and cancellations mounted nationwide.

“The city’s travel ban is lifted, but conditions on the roads remain icy,” Mamdani said in a social media post. “If you choose to drive, please exercise caution, travel slowly, and be mindful of others on the road.”

Massachusetts Governor Massachusetts on Monday afternoon banned non-essential motor vehicle travel in the state’s southern coast due to the blizzard and dangerous road conditions.

As of 2:40 p.m. New York time, 10,947 US flights scheduled from Sunday to Tuesday had been canceled, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking service.

The snow is wet and heavy, which could lead to broken tree limbs and damaged power lines causing power outages that stretch from Virginia to Massachusetts. As of 2:42 p.m., 638,624 homes and businesses were without power, according to PowerOutage.com. Massachusetts had the most outages with 291,269, followed by New Jersey with 127,933.

The heaviest snow and strongest winds swept across Long Island into Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, said Rob Carolan, owner of Hometown Forecast Services, which provides outlooks for Bloomberg Radio. Gusts reached 47 miles per hour at John F. Kennedy International Airport and as high as 70 mph on the Massachusetts islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

US natural gas futures surged as much as 6.8% in early Asian trading on Sunday as traders expected higher demand for the heating and power-plant fuel as temperatures dropped. But most of those gains were wiped out in early US trading on Monday as the storm knocked out power for half a million customers in the Northeast, with the contract for March gas delivery at 9:19 a.m. in New York up just 0.7% from Friday’s settlement price.

Wholesale electricity prices on the East Coast grids were muted as demand came in much lower after rising to record levels in last month’s storm. Most power being used on Monday was contracted for in the day-ahead market, and real-time prices are coming in lower because of weaker-than-forecast demand.

With many New York City businesses and schools closed, demand was coming in well below-forecast for Monday. Spot prices in Manhattan and surrounding boroughs were $84.52 a megawatt-hour at 12:19 p.m., 12% higher than the day-ahead price of $75.48 for the hour. On the adjacent and largest US grid operated by PJM Interconnection LLC, which stretches from New Jersey into North Carolina and out to Illinois, real-time prices were about $37 a megawatt-hour across the grid, weaker than day-ahead prices.

There will be a weak system moving through the Mid-Atlantic Thursday into Friday, which may bring a few inches of new snow to New York City and possible even as far north as Boston, said Frank Pereira, a senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center.

Further out over the time horizon is a more robust storm that may arrive by the middle of next week, however Pereira said it is still too early to tell what the details will be. One computer forecast model predicts it will be all rain across the large East Coast cities, including New York, while another said there may be a little snow.

–With assistance from Naureen S. Malik, Allyson Versprille, Will Kubzansky, Lauren Rosenthal, Joe Wertz, Mary Hui, Hayley Warren, Alex Newman and Julian Hast.

(Updates forecast starting in second paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected where the storm stands in NYC history.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.