Family Life

12.21.09 | FL News Team

Residents of the northeast are spending the first official day of winter digging out of what's being called the "Blizzard of 2009." The monster nor'easter that dumped nearly two feet of snow along the East Coast over the weekend has left too many buried cars to count, along with slick to unpassable roads and scores of cancelled or delayed flights. Train travel was also affected, with Amtrak experiencing mass cancellations and delays. The Baltimore-Washington area saw it's largest snow fall in six years. Washington's Reagan Airport finally reopened Sunday morning after 13-point-three inches of snow shut flights down earlier in the weekend. Washington-Dulles Airport received 16 inches, easily surpassing the old record of ten-point-six inches set on December 12th, 1964. In one day the area received its normal amount of snowfall for an entire season. To the north, New York City was blanketed with up to a foot of white stuff, while Boston and Cape Cod were slammed with as much as two feet of snow and gusting winds of up 60 miles per hour. Boston's Logan Airport had only one runway open early Sunday.

 Travelers were urged to stay home because of treacherous roads and main highway closures. A number of those not heeding the warning found themselves abandoning vehicles along the road. For retailers counting on the sales during the last weekend before Christmas, the blizzard turned into something of a shopper stopper storm. Although federal government agencies will be closed today, last night senators still made their way to work for a critical vote on healthcare reform.