New York mayor orders citywide travel ban as major storm hits US

NEW YORK: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Sunday (Feb 22) ordered the shutdown of the city’s entire traffic network for all but emergency travel as a massive snowstorm began to hit the northeast United States.

Tens of millions of Americans from the US capital Washington to the northern state of Maine prepared for up to 60cm of snow forecast in some areas.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said blizzard conditions would “quickly materialise” from Maryland up to southeastern New England, making travel “extremely treacherous.”

Snow could fall at a rate of 5cm to 7.5cm per hour at the peak of the storm, with nearly 54 million people in its path, it said.

On Sunday evening, the storm had already begun to hit New York, slashing visibility to the extent that the skyscrapers of Wall Street were barely visible from the adjacent borough of Brooklyn.

Power outages are likely, due to heavy snow and strong wind gusts, forecasters said. As of 7.30pm local time, at least 22,895 customers were without power in the state of New Jersey, according to tracking website poweroutage.us.

In New York, which has more than eight million people, Mamdani said streets, highways and bridges would be shut down from 9pm Sunday until noon Monday.

“New York City has not faced a storm of this scale in the last decade,” he said, explaining the state of emergency. “We are asking New Yorkers to avoid all non-essential travel.”