New York and the Northeast will greet spring with the fourth nor’easter in three weeks and a blanket of heavy, wet snow from Philadelphia to Boston.
Snow will start late Tuesday, pelting New York commuters with 5 to 11 inches (13 to 28 centimeters) by the time the storm ends on Thursday, according to a winter storm watch from the National Weather Service. Boston is likely to get 8 to 12 inches, Philadelphia 10 inches and Trenton, New Jersey, a foot. Washington will begin with rain and freezing rain Tuesday, but may end up with 2 to 4 inches of snow, said Brian Hurley, a senior branch forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
“It will be a mess to bring in spring,” Hurley said by telephone. The season begins Tuesday in the Northern Hemisphere. “This is number four taking it from the first day of March. It is unusual but not unprecedented,” he said.
Three storms have already ripped across the Northeast this month, dropping snow by the foot from just outside New York to Boston. More than 2 million customers were without power during the worst of them, which also caused high seas and flooding along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to New Jersey. More than 9,100 flights were canceled across the U.S., according to FlightAware in Houston.