Many large school districts remained closed, including in Boston and Hartford, Connecticut. But in New York City, more than 900,000 students in the nation’s largest public school system had a regular day, Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared, inviting kids to pelt him with snowballs over his decision.
Many students and their caregivers seemed open to taking the mayor up on that idea, as they scrambled over mountainous snow banks and dodged salt spreaders during the morning drop-off.
“We’re walking on thin ice here. One more day would’ve been fine,” said Danielle Obloj, the parent of a Brooklyn fifth grader. “They should never have let these kids come back to school.”
Nearly 1 in 6 teachers called out sick Tuesday, the first day back after the blizzard and a midwinter break, city officials said.
Mamdani, a Democrat, and Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels noted that families rely on in-person school for education and many other things, including parents’ ability to go to work. The officials also maintained that it would have been complicated to roll out remote learning at the end of a midwinter break.
Others hailed the city’s efforts at snow-clearing.
“It was much better than last time — an easy commute, no problems whatsoever,” said Raul Garcia, as he exited a cab with his three school-age children. “We thought it was going to be really bad walking, but looking at the streets, they’re so clean.”
Preliminary attendance data shows 63% of the roughly 900,000 students came in, Samuels said. City data show the average attendance rate for the last school year was about 90%. Mamdani said about 12,000 of the school system’s 78,800 teachers called out sick. The city called in more than 5,000 substitutes
Philadelphia switched to online learning Monday and Tuesday, while districts on Long Island and elsewhere in the New York suburbs canceled school again Tuesday.
Roads are reopening and mass transit is coming back online
Monday’s storm that meteorologists are calling the strongest in a decade dumped more than 2 feet (0.6 meters) of snow in parts of the Northeast. More than 3 feet (0.9 meters) fell in Rhode Island — surpassing snow totals from the historic Blizzard of 1978 that struck the Northeast, the National Weather Service said.
By Tuesday morning, roads began to reopen, mass transportation was coming back online in some cities and power had returned for some of the hundreds of thousands who had lost electricity in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware and Rhode Island. More than 100,000 remained without power in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which operates essentially on a single circuit, according to Douglas Foley, president of electric operations for the utility Eversource.
Amtrak canceled some trains between Boston and New York and between New York and Philadelphia on Tuesday morning.
But other railroads were open, including New Jersey Transit, and the Long Island Railroad “unleashed” a snow-clearing train car known as “Darth Vader” to clear snow drifts.
Another storm is on the way
The weather service said it's tracking another storm that could bring snow to the Great Lakes on Tuesday before pushing into the Northeast on Wednesday. The clipper storm brings the prospect of a combination of rain and up to a couple of inches of snow.
The new storm is not expected to be as strong, but even a few extra inches of snow on top of hard-hit areas could make cleanup more difficult, said Frank Pereira, meteorologist for the weather service in College Park, Maryland.
Canceled flights and a snowball fight
The weather service referred to Monday’s storm as a “classic bomb cyclone/nor’easter off the Northeast coast.” A bomb cyclone happens when a storm’s pressure falls by a certain amount within a 24-hour period.
Roughly 2,200 flights in and out of the U.S. were canceled Tuesday, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Most of the cancellations involved airports in New York, New Jersey and Boston.
Rhode Island’s T.F. Green International Airport paused its airport operations Monday as it dealt with nearly 38 inches (97 centimeters) of snow, according to the Weather Service, breaking a record of 28.6 inches (72.6 centimeters) set in 1978. The pause was expected to continue through Tuesday afternoon as the airport assessed conditions.
Along with the disruptions, the storm led to the creation of armies of snowmen and other sculptures as well as snowball fights.
A massivesnowball fight e rupted Monday in New York City’s Washington Square Park, but video showed two outnumbered police officers being pelted by snowballs. City police commissioner Jessica Tisch called the behavior “disgraceful” and “criminal.”
Storm strands juror as sex trafficking trial resumes
Storm-related travel disruptions even impacted the resumption of a high-profile criminal case in Manhattan federal court.
A juror in the sex trafficking trial of wealthy brothers Alon, Oren and Tal Alexander was “trapped in Miami” and wasn’t scheduled for a return flight until Friday, Juge Valerie Caproni said Tuesday.
The judge eventually dismissed the stranded juror from the case, leaving just one alternate. The trial wasn’t held last week to accommodate jurors whose children were on a school break.
“I am loath to lose another juror, but I am also loath to lose another week of trial,” Caproni said.
___
This story has been corrected to show that more than 900,000 public school students were affected by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision to keep schools open, not more than 1 million.
___
Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz and Michael R. Sisak in New York; Mike Catalini in Morrisville, Pennsylvania; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.