Residents across the Northeast are digging out Monday from a weekend winter storm that forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights and may have contributed to the deaths of at least four people in New York.
The deadly storm walloped a number of northeast states, including New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, with some declaring emergencies over the storm system as another high impact storm began to take shape.
Governors in New York and New Jersey were among those to declare a state of emergency, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office warning on Friday that the storm was “expected to bring heavy snow and strong winds” to downstate regions over the weekend.
The storm system delivered on that threat, bringing more than 30 inches of snowfall to parts of Massachusetts between Saturday and Sunday and nearly 25 inches of snow to parts of New York within the same time period.
On Saturday, the National Weather Service in Boston said the city had tied its record for the biggest day of snowfall at 23.6 inches.
The area received a total of 23.8 inches of snow, but the weather service said 0.2 inches of that fell on Friday.
In New York, the inclement weather was believed to have potentially played a role in the deaths of at least four people on Long Island.
At least three men were reported to have died after appearing to have been out shoveling snow on Saturday, NBC New York reported.
Two men, ages 53 and 75, were found dead in Syosset. Both men were found outside near their snow shovels and were pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
A third man was found in a swimming pool in Cutchogue, according to the Southold Town Police Department. Authorities believed the elderly man had fallen into the pool while shoveling snow. Officers tried to revive the man, but their efforts were unsuccessful.
Long Island was hit especially hard in the snowstorm, with snow totals hitting 24.7 inches in Islip by the end of Saturday.
In a fourth incident, an elderly woman was found dead on Saturday in a vehicle in a hotel parking lot in Uniondale, according to officials.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman told NBC New York that a snowplow driver had found the woman. He said her official cause of death had not been confirmed, but said it appeared she had likely suffered a heart attack or other sudden health event and was unable to get help during the storm.
“It’s a sad situation, but it illustrates how dangerous it is, people should not be out unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Blakeman said.
The winter storm also caused hundreds of flight cancellations, in addition to leaving thousands of people without power.
More than 1,500 flights within, into and out of the U.S. were canceled on Sunday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.com. On Monday, just over 260 U.S. flights were canceled as of 9 a.m. ET.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, strong winds knocked down power lines, with more than 96,000 outages recorded across the state on Saturday, according to outage tracker PowerOutage.us. By Monday, the number of outages listed on the website had dropped to just over 600.
Another large winter storm system is in the works, with 31 million people under winter alerts stretching from Colorado to Michigan.
Snow was already falling from Washington state over to Minnesota as of Monday morning, with winds in the Rocky Mountains potentially gusting up to 90 miles per hour.
By Tuesday, rain is expected across Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, but is set to turn into snow overnight.
The incoming storm is expected to be a slow mover, bringing snow from Kansas up through Michigan with potential icing in southern Missouri by Wednesday.
As the U.S. braces for another storm, unusually cold temperatures in Florida have sparked an equally unusual warning, with officials telling residents to watch out for iguanas falling from trees.
“Iguanas are cold-blooded. They slow down or become immobile when temps drop into the 40s (4-9 Celsius),” the National Weather Service Miami-South Florida warned in a tweet on Sunday. “They may fall from trees, but they are not dead,” it said.
Video shared on Instagram by one resident in Hollywood, Florida, appeared to show a number of immobile iguanas lying outside on the ground.
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The poster, Stacy Lopiano-Kopsaftis, said her yard had been “littered with frozen iguanas.”
“I’m happy to report they have all recovered!” she said, with one iguana eventually scurrying away toward the end of the video.
Erin McGarry contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
