A powerful winter storm pummeled the U.S. East Coast Monday, snarling travel, shutting down federal offices in Washington, and closing schools and local governments throughout the area. The latest in a series of winter fronts that have hammered the region, the storm is expected to dump up to 22 centimeters of snow on the U.S. capital as it sweeps from the Mississippi Valley to the Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic states, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures were expected to be below average by 11 to 22 degrees Celsius from the Great Plains to the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes and into the Tennessee Valley, the service said. Freeze warnings were in place from the Canadian border into Texas. The main electric grid operator for most of Texas issued a conservation alert due to expected higher power demand. The storm prompted the U.S. government to shutter its offices in the Washington area, keeping hundreds of thousands of federal workers at home. Congress put off scheduled votes because of the bad weather. Roughly 2,100 flights were canceled and 500 were delayed as of early Monday because of the storm, according to the airline tracking site FlightAware.com. The ripple effect from cancellations and delays is expected to have an impact on air travel across the United States. A cold front pouring into the Northeast is forecast to keep most of the snow away from New York and Boston, with an inch or so expected in New York, forecasters said. At least two weather-related deaths, both from traffic accidents, were blamed on the wide-ranging storm over the weekend.
