A spring storm brought high winds that whipped snow across portions of Massachusetts and eastern Maine on Wednesday, causing near-whiteout conditions on Cape Cod as it moved up the Atlantic coast.
Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were expected to bear the brunt of the storm as it strikes Massachusetts, perhaps dropping up to 10 inches of snow, forecasters said. Less snow was expected farther to the north and west in Massachusetts, with the Boston area getting just an inch or two.
Violent winds stretched as far as Boston, fueling a 9-alarm fire that sent 18 people, including firefighters, to the hospital Wednesday afternoon.
(MORE: Boston Firefighters Injured)
In the Cape Cod town of Chatham, a 214-year-old house was felled by the storm, according to local reports.
“It’s right across from the beach, and it looks like the gusts of wind twisted it sideways and then it started to pancake,” Chatham Fire Department Deputy Chief Peter Connick told the Boston Globe.
Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel, reporting from Chatham, Mass., was being pelted by snow and sea spray Wednesday morning and cautioned the worst of the storm was yet to come.
"Unless you adore pain, I suggest you stay inside today because this is going on all day long and we haven't gotten to the worst of it yet," Cantore said. "It's brutal."
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Schools across Cape Cod closed. Ferry and flight service to the islands was canceled. State courts in the region also closed. Winds that could gust up to 70 miles per hour were blowing snow horizontally Wednesday morning, stinging the faces of those few who dared venture outside.
As tides rolled in, Nantucket officials told the Boston Globe that areas of town were flooding. No injuries have been reported, Dave Fonzuto, the island's emergency management coordinator, told the newspaper.
On Maine's eastern tip, Hancock and Washington counties could get 8 to 16 inches of snow. Gov. Paul LePage ordered state offices in both counties closed Wednesday morning as flurries started falling.
Blizzard warnings were in effect in both states. The National Weather Service also warned of coastal flooding and significant beach erosion along the Massachusetts coast and wind gusts causing scattered power outages in eastern Maine.
Just days after the official end of one of the snowiest winters on record, the storm began heading up the Interstate 95 corridor on Tuesday, dropping snowflakes onto Washington, D.C.'s budding cherry trees and dusting government buildings in northern Virginia. Almost 4 inches of snow was reported at Dulles International Airport and 1.7 inches at Reagan National Airport.
As the storm moved north, it dropped about 6 inches of snow in southern Delaware's Sussex County and blanketed parts of southern New Jersey, where 6½ inches of snow was reported in Cape May, 5½ inches in Middle Township and 4 inches at Atlantic City International Airport.
Transportation officials around the mid-Atlantic warned motorists Wednesday to take care and watch for black ice a day after a spring snowstorm hit the region.
Although spring began a week ago, it's not unusual to have storms so late in the year, said weather service spokesman Bill Simpson. The Boston area got more than 2 inches of snow in an April storm last year and was blanketed with almost 2 feet the same month in 1997.
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