Mayor doesn’t let snow keep N.Y. residents down

NEW YORK (AP) — Up to a foot of snow on Friday interrupted what had been a mild winter in much of the Northeast and created havoc for travelers, forcing the cancellation of more than 1,100 flights in the New York area alone.

Roads were slick throughout the region and there were hundreds of accidents, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged people to look on the bright side.

“The timing is perfect, if you think about it,” he said. “We’ll have the whole weekend to clean up the mess.”

If that didn’t cheer up his constituents, the mayor also announced that free hot chocolate and free sled rentals were available Friday at one park in each of the city’s five boroughs.

Half a foot of snow fell in New York City. Up to a foot was forecast in suburban counties, and up to 9 inches fell in parts of Connecticut. Storm warnings extended northward across Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. In many places, snow was changing over to rain, sometimes freezing rain.

The storm was not unusual for mid-February, but it was easily the New York area’s most significant storm of the winter. The expansive system, which had brought everything from freezing rain to sleet to snow in parts of Kentucky, Missouri and Illinois on Thursday, lumbered eastward and northward overnight.

In Missouri, where the problem was mostly ice rather than snow, the State Highway Patrol cited slippery roads as factors in accidents that killed five people Thursday and early Friday.

By mid-afternoon Friday there were 548 flight cancellations at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, 368 at Newark Liberty International Airport and 197 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, said Steve Coleman, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.