The Northeast is about to get walloped. And not the gentle, picturesque kind of winter that shows up on greeting cards. We’re talking about a fierce nor’easter that’s prompting travel bans, flight cancellations, and school closures across New York, New Jersey, Boston, and beyond.
Snow is already falling. The National Weather Service is calling this a “major winter storm” with 1 to 2 feet of accumulation expected across many areas. But here’s the kicker: some spots could see as much as 2 inches per hour at peak intensity. Visibility will drop to a quarter-mile or less in affected regions.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had a major nor’easter and major blizzard of this magnitude across the Northeast,” said Cody Snell, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. That’s one way to put it.
When a Storm Gets Serious
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn’t messing around. He’s implemented a travel ban on all non-emergency street travel from 9 p.m. Sunday through noon Monday. Schools are getting the day off, which Mamdani called “the first old-school snow day since 2019.” Kids across the city received a directive: stay cozy.
Similar restrictions are happening everywhere. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Delaware have all issued state of emergency declarations. Airlines canceled more than 3,500 flights as of Sunday afternoon, with thousands more delays piling up. Broadway went dark. DoorDash shut down deliveries overnight in the city.
Even Arlington National Cemetery announced closures for Monday.
The real danger here isn’t just the snow. It’s the combination of heavy, wet snow with extreme wind gusts that meteorologists are most worried about. Bryce Williams from the National Weather Service’s Boston office put it plainly: “Winds like that, combined with heavy, wet snow, are a recipe for damaged trees and prolonged power outages.”
This could be the kind of storm that knocks people offline for days. That gets old fast.
A Storm That Could Make History
Weather officials are openly discussing the possibility of this becoming a bomb cyclone, which happens when a storm drops at least 24 millibars in pressure within 24 hours. Frank Pereira from the weather service expects this storm to do exactly that.
“We’re expecting it to drop by that magnitude at least over the course of the next 24 hours,” Pereira said. “I think when all is said and done, it will meet the definition of a bomb cyclone.”
The storm is being described as “Potentially Historic/Destructive” southeast of the Boston-Providence corridor. That’s not casual language.
Business as Usual Gets Disrupted
For business owners like John Berlingieri, who runs Berrington Snow Management on Long Island, this storm means one thing: around-the-clock work. His company has been preparing for days, recharging batteries on 40 front-end loaders and replacing windshield wipers on snow-removal vehicles.
“I’m anticipating at least one week of work around the clock,” Berlingieri said. “We’re going to work 24 to 36 hours straight, sleep for a few hours and then go back.”
Meanwhile, city outreach workers have been mobilizing to get homeless residents off the street and into warming centers and shelters. The news cycle will shift entirely to storm coverage, emergency response, and recovery efforts in the coming days.
This is the kind of event that reminds you why weather forecasting matters, why emergency preparedness isn’t just bureaucratic box-checking, and why sometimes the smartest thing you can do is stay home and let the professionals handle the roads. The question isn’t whether this storm will be bad. It’s how prepared the region actually is when it hits.
