Snowfall Closes Airports, Schools in East

The Northeast’s first big snowstorm of the season left a trail of up to 20 inches of snow Wednesday from Pennsylvania across New England, closing two major airports and shutting down schools.

“The storm couldn’t have come at a worse time, right at the beginning of the rush hour,” Boston Mayor Raymond F. Flynn said. He appealed to commuters to take buses and trains so crews could clear the roads.

Six traffic deaths were blamed on roads left slippery by the storm, two each in Michigan and Massachusetts and one each in Pennsylvania and New York state.

Shelters Opened

Connecticut Gov. William A. O’Neill ordered the National Guard to open seven state armories as emergency shelters for the state’s more than 200,000 customers left without electricity when the snow snapped power lines.

Snow stopped falling in much of New England by mid-morning as the storm moved out to sea. But gale warnings remained in effect along the coast, with wind gusts up to 56 m.p.h. reported at Cape Cod and Nantucket Island.

The storm’s speed was illustrated at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Sheets of rain fell at 4 a.m., followed one hour later by heavy wet snow accompanied by thunder and lightning. Snowfall began to taper off at 7 a.m., and the sun broke through the clouds about an hour later.

Logan was closed for more than three hours with slush on the runways, a Massachusetts Port Authority official said. Bradley International Airport in Connecticut was closed by low visibility and snow-covered runways.

Court Shut Down

U.S. District Court closed in Concord, N.H., and numerous school districts were closed in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York state and Vermont.

The storm piled up 20 inches of snow at Francestown, N.H., 17 inches around Halifax, Vt., 14 inches at North Foster, R.I., and 12 inches at North Adams, Mass. Parts of northeastern Pennsylvania got a foot of snow.

“We got six to eight inches, just enough to screw everything up,” said Trooper Lloyd Brooks in McKean County in northwestern Pennsylvania. “Trees down in the roads, power lines down. It’s heavy snow, and it stuck to the trees and bent everything down.”

On Lake Erie, three men working on the Conneaut Harbor lighthouse, off the Ohio shore, had to spend the night there after their boat was washed away by up to 8-foot waves, the Coast Guard said. They were rescued Wednesday.