A fast-moving winter storm brought high winds and heavy snowfall to a wide stretch of the eastern United States on Saturday, knocking out power to thousands and disrupting travel with hazardous conditions, meteorologists said.
As the storm traveled from Tennessee to Maine, putting about 16 million people under a National Weather Service winter storm warning, meteorologists warned that the precipitation would be followed by a cold snap and strong winds.
“It’s a rather expansive winter storm, but it’s very, very quick moving,” Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist in College Park, Md., at the service’s Weather Prediction Center, said on Saturday. “So it’s one of those deals where the worst impacts are really just going to be for today.”
Heavy snowfall was already affecting the central Appalachians on Saturday morning, Mr. Orrison said, and it would be moving rapidly across the northern mid-Atlantic region and up into the Northeast over the course of the day.
Snowfall exceeded eight inches in some parts of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to preliminary reports from the Weather Service.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation asked drivers to avoid unnecessary travel and imposed speed restrictions on some roads.
Snow may fall in some places at a rate of one to two inches per hour and may combine with winds of up to 50 miles per hour, leading to “blowing and drifting snow” from the central Appalachians to the Northeast, the Weather…
