East Coasters battle feet of snow, bringing travel chaos, road closures and shuttered schools

The East Coast will be blasted by a bomb cyclone today, which will bury some areas in a foot of snow as blizzard-like conditions sweep across the region.

The rapidly intensifying nor’easter is expected to disrupt thousands of travel plans and close a slew of schools across New York and New England.

“​​This will be the first blizzard for much of the mid-Atlantic and southern New England coasts in about four years," Tyler Roys, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, said.

He also warned that New York City was hit with around 9.4 inches of snow during the city’s last blizzard, which swept in on February 8, 2017.

Roads in New Jersey were closed from 9 pm on Sunday until 7 am this morning. New York City officials also closed roads. In Nassau County, Long Island, cars were also banned from public roadways.

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More than 3,500 flights were canceled across the U.S. as of Sunday afternoon, along with thousands of delays, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Airports in the path of the storm, including in New York City and Boston, were also seeing widespread cancellations and delays.

Ahead of this new snowstorm, the city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has already declared a state of emergency and shuttered schools across the metropolitan area.

In a heartwarming video, the mayor personally called one youngster to tell them that they had a day off from school.

“Oh my god, it’s the mayor,” a New York student named Victoria said as she picked up the phone.

“So my only ask of you is that you just remain safe,” Mamdani said. “Stay indoors during the height of the storm. Once that has passed, feel free to go out and sled.”

The storm is expected to experience bombogenesis, or transform into a bomb cyclone, early on Monday morning.

As the storm progresses, AccuWeather says that parts of New Jersey and Long Island, as well as southeastern New England, will experience between 18 and 24 inches of snow.

Snowfall is expected to be heavier in coastal areas, though some mid-Atlantic regions are expected to be hit with up to 3 inches of snow per hour.

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Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Eastern Tennessee and the North Carolina mountains are expected to receive lower snowfall totals, but still enough to require a shovel or plow.

Wind speeds are projected to range from 35 to 60mph, which could worsen the soaring number of power outages.

An estimated 432,579 homes on the East Coast have already been left without power due to the storm, according to PowerOutage.US.

Meanwhile, 5,368 flights into, within or out of the United States were cancelled on Monday morning, according to FlightAware.

However, some social media users in Boston have chosen to look on the funny side as the huge storm bears down on the United States.

“I’m shoveling out the old snow to make room for the new snow here in Boston,” one joked, accompanying their post with a gif of a man digging himself out of a snowhill.

“Boston public schools sending out the snow cancellation immediately after the US wins gold seems like the most Boston move of all,” another mused, referencing a win by Team USA at the Winter Olympics.

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On the social media platform X, the New York Branch of the National Weather Service shared insights into the harsh weather conditions near its office in Upton.

In the footage, filmed 66 miles from New York City, several cars are seen buried under snow and ice as more snow flurries fly through the air.

“Expect whiteout conditions in heavy blowing snow,” the NWS captioned the post.

Tyler McCarthy, a snowplow driver based Suffolk County, Long Island, told CBS News that he has been forced to repeatedly plow the same spots because the snow was falling so quickly.

"You couldn't see in front of us on the way in to get to the truck, and within like an hour, it just accumulated and stuck instantly," he said. "The visibility went nowhere, and you couldn't see the road, couldn't see the lanes."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.