A new storm brought heavy rains, snow and powerful winds to New York and New Jersey, leaving over 1700 flights cancelled and thousands of residents without power in the US East Coast, which is still reeling under the devastating impact of hurricane Sandy.
The National Weather Service said the latest storm, named Athena, was moving northward off the East Coast and would bring a wintry mix of precipitation to areas across the northern mid-Atlantic and northeast.u00a0
It forecast wind gusts as high as 60 miles per hour along the coast and snowfall across the New England region of up to 6-10 inches over the next two days. The agency said apart from rain, minor to moderate coastal flooding is also possible in New Jersey and New York.
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Pedestrians walk through high winds and snow at Union Square in New York City (Pic-AFP)
The mix of rain and snow, which covered buildings, roads and cars in parts of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, also led airlines to cancel flights for a day.
According to airline tracking service FlightAware.com, 1710 flights were cancelled, with major cancellations occurring at New Jersey's Newark Airport, New York's LaGuardia and J F K Airport.
The storm threatened to hamper the slow and difficult recovery process underway in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which a week after being ravaged by superstorm Sandy are still struggling to return to normalcy.
With millions already living without power in the wake of Sandy, the new storm left thousands more residents in the region without electricity.
New Jersey's utility company Public Service Electric and Gas said 181,000 customers were still without power due to hurricane Sandy and the number of additional outages due to Athena is about 60,000 statewide. The company warned that the number of households without power would "undoubtedly" climb.
The northeaster storm also knocked out electricity to roughly 16,000 customers of New York's largest utility company Consolidated Edison. In all, 80,000 Con Edison customers had no power last evening, up from about 64,000 earlier in the day, according to the company.u00a0
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