Power outages, travel troubles and bitter cold plague Northeast in wake of historic bomb cyclone blizzard

By Danya Gainor, Chris Boyette, CNN

(CNN) — Thousands in the Northeast remained without power amid freezing temperatures Tuesday as people from that region and the mid-Atlantic dug out from extreme snowfall – including more than 2 feet in several states – from the previous two days and faced continuing travel disruptions including hundreds of canceled flights.

Temperatures in much of the Northeast are not expected to climb above freezing Tuesday, so snow melting may be limited.

The storm, which began Sunday night, hit bomb cyclone status in the early hours of Monday as it strengthened extremely quickly, ramping winds to hurricane-force gusts, intensifying snow bands and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands. Local officials echoed state of emergency declarations and issued travel bans while the tens of millions of people under blizzard warnings hunkered down.

Of the more than 295,000 customers still without power in the region Tuesday afternoon, more than 235,000 were in Massachusetts, the vast majority of whom were customers of the Eversource utility company in southeastern Massachusetts, including Cape Cod, according to PowerOutage.us.

“It will take days” to turn on the lights for every Massachusetts customer, an Eversource official said.

“It is a multiday restoration,” Doug Foley, Eversource’s president of electric operations in Massachusetts, said at a news conference Tuesday. “The last couple customers, unfortunately, will be a couple days out.”

Those who do dig out of the snow may have trouble going anywhere despite easing travel bans, with public transit delays, icy road conditions and flight cancellations across the region.

As of 3 p.m. ET, more than 2,100 US flights had been canceled Tuesday, according to FlightAware. The vast majority of those flights had been scheduled to arrive at or depart from the four major northeastern airports – Newark; Boston; and LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy in New York – which were still recovering Tuesday morning from the storm.

Among those hoping to fly out Tuesday was Alyssa Myers, whose flight from Philadelphia to Albuquerque on Sunday afternoon was canceled. She rebooked and canceled several times.

“If you don’t have to go, cancel the trip, get the refund, wait for warmer weather,” Myers told CNN’s Danny Freeman at Philadelphia International Airport.

The historic storm yielded numerous impacts as schools across the region closed, both the US House and Senate postponed this week’s first vote series, major train routes were adjusted, public transit was paused and even the popular food delivery service DoorDash suspended its operations in the country’s biggest city.

Though the storm dwindled by Monday evening, a forecast for more looms. Here’s what you need to know:

• Stunning snow totals: From the Mid-Atlantic to New England, 1 to 3 feet of snow buried communities during the historic blizzard. As of 7 p.m. ET Monday, Providence, Rhode Island, saw the most snowfall with 37.9 inches. The highest totals in other states include Whitman, Massachusetts, with 33.7 inches; Central Islip, New York, with 31 inches; North Stonington, Connecticut, with 30.8 inches; and Lyndhurst, New Jersey, with 30.7 inches. Follow more snow totals across the Northeast here.

• Records broken across the region: The bomb cyclone delivered historic impacts to cities across the Northeast, becoming the biggest snowstorm on record for Providence, Rhode Island. When just over 27 inches had fallen on Newark, New Jersey, around 1 p.m., the snowstorm officially ranked as the city’s second-heaviest based on records dating back to 1931. The storm also marked the Big Apple’s snowiest winter since the 2020-2021 season. In Philadelphia, snowfall totals marked the most from a single storm since January 2016.

• Potential for more snow: Another chance for snow will materialize for the Northeast not long after this brutal storm. Fortunately, it looks to be quick-hitting without massive snow potential. The new storm will bring some snow to the Great Lakes on Tuesday and reach the Northeast overnight into Wednesday. Most places in the region will see less than two inches, though higher elevations in Pennsylvania, New York and New England might get a few more.

• Dizzying flight cancellations: The monstrous bomb cyclone also wreaked havoc on air travel, with more than 10,000 US flights canceled from Sunday to Tuesday. That includes more than 2,100 cancellations for Tuesday, with the majority concentrated at Boston Logan International Airport, with high levels of disruption also spread across the New York City–area airports, according to FlightAware.

• Widespread power outages persist: Power outages soared through Monday, caused by extreme winds and heavy snow, with more close to 400,000 customers without power by 6:30 a.m. ET that day, and 650,000 five hours later. Outages across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions appeared to stabilize by 1 p.m. Monday. But some power restoration efforts were delayed because of the very weather that caused them. By Tuesday afternoon, more than 295,000 customers were still impacted.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s August Phillips, Aaron Cooper, Holly Yan, Alaa Elassar, Zoe Sottile, Hanna Park and meteorologists Mary Gilbert, Briana Waxman and Chris Dolce contributed to this reporting.