Snow Pelts Capital, Most of the East

Snow fell over much of the Northeast today, closing scores of schools and the New Jersey Legislature, slowing traffic on icy highways and canceling some airline flights. Even horses didn’t run as two race tracks shut down.

The snow came after a day of “Arctic Express” cold that sent the homeless crowding into shelters and forced hundreds of Boston residents without heat to spend the night in a school.

Two accidents, including a chain-reaction collision involving three tractor-trailers and two buses, closed the westbound lanes of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in western Pennsylvania for two hours. Three people died in two weather-related traffic accidents in Virginia.

Winter storm warnings or travelers’ advisories were posted across parts of Maryland, Delaware, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. Travelers’ advisories extended into southern New England as the snow moved to the Northeast. Up to five inches of snow iced roads in the mountains of northern North Carolina.

Two to four inches fell over parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia before tapering off or changing to rain during the morning.

New Jersey’s Legislature canceled today’s sessions and Gov. Thomas H. Kean canceled a public bill signing.

Classes were canceled or delayed at scores of schools in West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York City’s suburbs and western Pennsylvania, and absenteeism at other schools was up.

The snow also canceled horse races at Waterford Park at Chester, W.Va., and at New York’s Aqueduct, along with dog races at West Virginia’s Wheeling Downs.

Eastern Airlines’ 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. shuttle flights from New York City to Washington and Boston were canceled, and there were other scattered cancellations. The New York Port Authority reported half-hour delays at LaGuardia Airport, and the main landing runway at Newark, N.J., was closed an hour for plowing.

New Jersey officials reduced the speed limit to 45 m.p.h. and then to 35 m.p.h. along the length of the state’s icy turnpike this morning.

Rising temperatures in West Virginia turned snow to rain around the middle of the day after up to five inches of snow fell in the state’s mountains, but major highways were reported snow-covered and the speed limit on the West Virginia Turnpike was cut to 45 m.p.h.

New York state, much of which endured below-zero temperatures Wednesday, had the coldest reporting point in the lower 48 states today for the second consecutive day, with Massena, on the St. Lawrence River, reporting a temperature of 14 degrees below.