A spring nor'easter has already dropped at least a foot of snow on parts of New York and Pennsylvania, leading to power outages and closures of businesses and schools.
Nearly 230,000 customers were without power in the Northeast on Tuesday afternoon. New York had the most outages at more than 171,000, while Pennsylvania had more than 42,000, according to PowerOutage.us. The numbers were falling as power was being restored.
Virgil, in upstate New York, had seen the most snowfall by Tuesday afternoon, with 18 inches on the ground. Areas north and west of Albany reported a foot of snow and more.
Indian Lake, New York, and New Milford, Pennsylvania, were each buried in 16 inches of snow.
Broome County, New York, implemented a travel ban. Binghamton, which is within Broome, got 14.2 inches of snow, setting the record for its biggest April snowstorm.
The heavy, wet snow was falling at a rate of 1 to 2 inches per hour across upstate New York.
In Syracuse, the rapid snowfall and outages prompted numerous school and business closures.
Forecasters said the snow is expected to taper through the day, but not before dropping 3 to 6 more inches. The highest totals are expected to be in the Adirondack Mountains.
High winds will stay in place through the night, long after the snow stops.
Nantucket, Massachusetts, will likely see wind gusts of 43 mph, while Islip, on New York's Long Island, will see 39 mph gusts.
An "abnormally chilly air-mass" in the east will remain through the middle of the week, according to the National Weather Service.
"A handful of daily record cold high and low temperatures are forecast in parts of the Midwest, Great Lakes, and Northeast today," the weather service said.
About 40 million people were under frost and freeze alerts Tuesday morning stretching from the central Plains to the mid-Atlantic.
Temperatures 15 to 25 degrees below average will make highs Tuesday and Wednesday feel more like March than April.
The region will get a chance to thaw out later in the week when a warmup is expected.
