Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
Pedestrians made their way to work in New York on Friday morning.
As heavy, wet snow started to blanket much of the Northeast on Friday morning, people rushed to stores to stock up on supplies, drivers lined up at gas stations to fill their tanks and local authorities from New York City to Maine started working to battle what forecasters said could be the biggest blizzard for some cities in a century.
Throughout the night and into the morning airlines announced the suspension of thousands of flights out of New York and Boston airports, as workers in towns and cities across the region readied their plows, checked their stocks of salt and braced for what will most likely be a cold and busy weekend. Amtrak announced that beginning early Friday afternoon it would suspend northbound service out of Pennsylvania Station in New York and southbound service out of Boston.
Schools across New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island announced that they would close, or dismiss students early on Friday.
On Long Island, the power company, which has received heavy criticism for its response to Hurricane Sandy, promised customers that it was prepared.
The city of Boston, where snow started to fall around 9:30 a.m. and forecasts called for more than two feet of snow to fall by Saturday, announced that it would close all schools on Friday and that mass transit in the city would be suspended starting at 3:30 p.m., joining other localities in trying to get ahead of the storm and keep people off the roads.
While officials warned people to stay home from work if possible on Friday, many kept to their usual morning commute, anticipating that they could get home before the worst of the storm was expected to hit. The latest forecasts said that blizzardlike conditions would start in New York City after dark. To help commuters beat the snow, transit officials announced increased bus and train service in the afternoon.
At 11 a.m. on Friday, forecasters expressed increasing confidence in the strength of the storm.
In New York City, where there is a mix of rain, snow and sleet, a rush of cold air is expected to filter back into the region by 4 p.m., at which point the rain will transition back to snow, said Tim Morrin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service based in Long Island.
“From then things go downhill pretty quickly,” he said. The winds will pick up, and snow will start coming down heavily.
In New England, the storm will intensify at about the same time, but because the area has not had rain, the total snowfalls will be greater.
“The worst conditions will be after dark and overnight,” Mr. Morrin said. “We don’t want to have folks get complacent seeing the rain and the just wet streets.”
By Saturday, the total expected snowfall in New York City is expected to be between 10 and 14 inches. In Long Island, the snow totals will range from 14 to 18 inches, with the highest amounts at the east end.
In New London, Conn., there will most likely be more than 24 inches of snow and even more in Boston, which could break modern records by topping 28 inches.
The severe weather is the result of two weather systems colliding, producing a powerful force. One system is coming from the north, carried along by the arctic jet stream, which will drop down from Canada and intersect with another system propelled by the polar jet stream, which usually travels through the lower 48 states.
“The storm should reach its peak intensity early Saturday morning just east of Cape Cod,” the National Weather Service said in a statement. With hurricane-force winds, the Weather Service predicted "dangerous blizzard conditions" for many parts of Northeast. Officials also expect flooding along the Atlantic coast affecting up to 8 million people.
The storm could rival the blizzard of 1978 in New England, when more than 27 inches of snow fell in Boston and surrounding cities. That storm, which occurred on a weekday 35 years ago, resulted in dozens of deaths and crippled the region for days.
Officials expect to be better prepared this time.
In the predawn hours, 300 road crews in Massachusetts started spreading salt and brine.
Big Storm and Its Disruptions Descend on the Northeast
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