By Peter Szekely
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A winter storm marched up the U.S. East Coast on Wednesday, delivering a disruptive blow to transportation systems and a welcome day off for some school kids, but not for many who have been learning remotely during the pandemic.
The Nor'easter had already brought a wintry mix to Washington, D.C., and snow to parts of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania by midday as it threatened a swath of the country that is home to more than 50 million people.
The sprawling system will dump up to 2 feet (60 cm) of snow in an area stretching from Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains to New York's Catskill Mountains, with lesser amounts of a foot (30 cm) or more in the rest of the Northeast, forecasters said.
Parts of Virginia and North Carolina will be blanketed with a thin later of ice while areas closer to the coast will get only rain before the storm moves out to sea from Boston late on Thursday, they said.
Meteorologist Bob Oravec of the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said the forecast could have been worse if not for the speed at which the system was traveling.
“It's not a slow-moving system at all, so it’s not going to be a very prolonged snow event,” Oravec said by phone.
Normally, major winter storms in the forecast meant children could count on a getting a day off of school, an especially welcome relief for those facing exams. But pandemic-induced remote learning has made the "snow day" less of a sure thing.
“It feels disappointing,” said Naiya Gardner, a fourth grader in Bethesda, Maryland, where the school district told students to expect "virtual learning" to go on as scheduled on Wednesday.
"In the old days even if there was a speck of snow the schools would shut," said nine-year-old Naiya.
But a school system in Jefferson County, West Virginia, within commuting distance of Washington, took a different approach, declaring proudly in a note widely shared on social media that it is shutting down on Wednesday in honor of snow.
"For just a moment, we can all let go of the worry of making up for the many things we missed by making sure this is one thing our kids won't lose this year," schools Superintendent Bondy Shay Gibson said in a note to the community.
"So please, enjoy a day of sledding and hot chocolate and cozy fires," Gibson said.
In New York City, officials warned residents of the potential for hazardous travel and urged people to stay off the roads.
Although the storm forced the city to suspend its coronavirus testing program for nearly a day starting on Wednesday afternoon, Mayor Bill de Blasio said it would not disrupt those efforts or the city's nascent COVID-19 vaccination program.
"The storm at this point does not present any meaningful change to our schedule," de Blasio said as the first healthcare workers were inoculated at Elmurst Hospital in Queens, which was crowded with patients at the height of the pandemic in the spring.
New York City schools, which just recently reopened their classrooms after a brief pandemic-induced shutdown, were set to go fully remote on Thursday when students are likely to wake up to more than a foot of snow on the ground, de Blasio said.The snow could significantly reduce visibility and potentially cripple travel in places, while winds of up to 50 miles per hour (80 km per hour) could down trees and power lines, causing power outages, the weather service said.
"Typically, when you have a big snowstorm like this, you can have snow totals one to two inches plus per hour,” Oravec said.