(Bloomberg) — Snow is piling up in Washington, shutting down federal offices and schools, as a winter storm that has snarled air and road traffic and knocked out power in six states makes its way east.
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As of 5:30 a.m., parts of Washington, where Congress will meet to certify the 2024 Presidential election later today, had received as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters), with forecasts of 12 inches in some areas before the system finally exits around midnight, said Frank Pereira, a senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center.
“Going forward we’re still expecting an additional 6 to 8 inches bringing our totals up close to a foot in some spots,” he said.
The storm is the first major snow event across most of the central and eastern US, dropping as much as 18 inches across eastern Kansas, arriving in time to tangle Washington’s morning commute. Most federal offices have been shut, according to the US Office of Personnel Management.
More than 1,300 flights around the US were canceled Monday, with the majority in Washington and Baltimore, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking service. On Sunday, an additional 1,811 trips were canceled.
Federally-funded rail passenger carrier Amtrak has also scrubbed trains across the Midwest, Mid Atlantic and Northeast, including the Acela high-speed service to and from Washington, according to its website. Commuter rail services in Maryland and Virginia won’t be running on most lines Monday.
As of 6:45 a.m. New York time, more than 290,000 customers were without power in six states from Missouri to Virginia, with Kentucky and Indiana hit hardest, according to PowerOutage.us.
Power prices more than doubled on three US grids stretching from the Northeast to the mid-Atlantic. The average for on-peak power on the New England grid jumped to $165 per megawatt-hour for Monday from Jan. 3 to the highest level in almost a year. New York City rose to a two-week high of about $146.
Electricity at the benchmark hub on the largest US grid operated by PJM Interconnection LLC, which serves more than 65 million people from Washington DC to Chicago, averaged $73 for Monday, the most in four months.
While the snow in Washington may ease by midday, a second round is expected later. New York City will be spared the worst of it, with less than inch and Boston won’t get any snow at all, Pereira said.
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–With assistance from Naureen S. Malik.
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