A storm coupled with extreme cold dumped up to 8 inches of snow in much of the East, sending cars sliding and causing a jet to skid off a taxiway.
"Aaagh! That's how it's been tonight. We've been busy, real busy," Philadelphia police Officer Kimberley Fairweather said Wednesday. "Nothing serious, fender benders, but it seems like if there's something out there to run into, they will."And Philadelphia got only an inch or 2, but around Erie there was up to 10 inches. Maine and New Hampshire got 4 to 7 inches along the coast. The snow continued early Thursday on Cape Cod, which had 3 to 5 inches. New York City got 3 to 4 inches.
The arctic cold that moved in on Christmas lingered in the East and the Great Lakes. It was 16 degrees this morning in Albany, N.Y.; 8 in Boston; 13 in Cincinnati; 8 in Portland, Maine; 13 in Detroit; and 6 in Lansing, Mich.
In Virginia, which got up to 8 inches of snow, David Murphy was at his desk when his car in the sloping parking lot went into a slide. "It was in park, but down it went," said Murphy, Isle of Wight County's public utilities director.
At least 11 deaths have been blamed on the weather since Tuesday. Also, a 7-year-old boy fell into an icy pond in East Windsor, N.J., and died.
John and Eunice Burris' car skidded on ice, flipped over a bridge guardrail and landed in a cold lake in western North Carolina. "They said they had to swim to the bank," said Tim Hand of the Rowan County Rescue Squad.
An American Airlines jet hit ice and skidded off a taxiway at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. None of the 69 passengers were hurt.