New York: A raging nor'easter howled its way up the East Coast on Sunday, breaking a snowfall record in New York, shutting down airports and dumping more than two feet of snow on some parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.
The storm snarled air traffic nationwide as major airports shut down, though most had reopened by Sunday evening. A Turkish jetliner skidded off a runway at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Sunday night, but no injuries were reported, an airport spokesman said.
Central Park in New York recorded nearly 27 inches of snow by about 4:15 p.m. Sunday, breaking a record of 26.4 inches that had stood since December 1947, according to the National Weather Service.
Other snowfall totals included 27.8 inches at Fairfield, Connecticut; 25.4 inches at New York's LaGuardia Airport; 21.3 inches in Columbia, Maryland, near Baltimore; and more than a foot in parts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, according to the National Weather Service.
The storm packed winds of up to 40 mph as it brushed the East Coast, and some parts of New England remained under blizzard warnings into Sunday evening, the National Weather Service reported.
Lightning and thunder accompanied some of the snowfall. The National Weather Service calls the rare phenomenon "thundersnow."
The heavy snow shut down Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport and all three New York City airports -- LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark-Liberty International. That forced the cancellation of thousands of flights, snarling air traffic nationwide.
But by 6 p.m. Sunday, only LaGuardia remained closed, and delays were reported only at Kennedy.
About 9:20 p.m. Sunday, a Turkish Air flight skidded off the runway at Kennedy and into a grassy field after landing, Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said. None of the 198 passengers aboard the trans-Atlantic flight was injured, he said.
LaGuardia was set to reopen at 6 a.m. Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.
Washington was briefly under a snow emergency Sunday, with 119,000 customers without power at one point, along with 62,000 Baltimore power customers and thousands more in New York and New Jersey.
Transit in New York was also affected as the city's Metro Rail service was halted. The city's subway and bus systems were operating, although buses were running less frequently than usual, according to the Port Authority. The city's sanitation department had 2,500 workers on the streets, each working 12-hour shifts for round-the-clock snow removal as New York prepared for Monday's rush hour.
Boston Public Schools said on its Web site that schools would be closed Monday.
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