Heavy Snow In America

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30973, 1 February 1966, Page 17

Heavy Snow In America

(N.Z P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, Jan. 31. Heavy snow brought a vast area of the eastern United States and Canada to a standstill today.

Temperatures were freezing from Montreal to Miami, and many of America’s Atlantic States were clogged with drifts of snow from 2ft to 15ft deep. Dozens of deaths were attributed to the storm, from road accidents to heart attacks caused by shovelling snow. Even in Florida, temperatures dropped to 10 degrees fahrenheit. Sub-zero readings were reported within 300 miles of the Gulf of Mexico.

The year’s heaviest rainstorm had moved eastward last night from San Francisco turning to snow as it reached the eastern States. The snow-storms eventually moved out to sea, but the bitter cold remained.

The temperature at Russellville, Alabama, dropped to 24 degrees below zero (fahrenheit) the lowest ever recorded in the State.

Throughout Alabama, the cold was accompanied by as much as Bin of snow in some places. In Virginia, two Greyhound buses which left Washington early yesterday were missing, presumably stranded in huge snow drifts. A state of emergency was declared in Delaware, and the National Guard was helping to clear the snowdrifts from highways. Army tanks were used to drag fire-engines to answer fire alarms. New York city received 6in of snow. Hundreds of flights were diverted from Kennedy Airport, where the strong winds were piling up immense drifts.

Washington had a total of 18in of snow on the ground, after the heaviest fall in many years. In Montreal, the swirling snow caused a spectacular 22car collision, as cars piled one after another into an original two-car accident which blocked a road. Five people were injured. But at Halifax Airport, the

snow was credited with preventing a serious aircraft accident.

A Soviet-built Ilyushin 18 Cubana airliner veered off a runway after landing for refuelling, but it thudded into a huge snowbank, which prevented any serious injury or damage. None of the 44 people on board was hurt, and the plane itself was only slightly damaged. Airport officials said that if it had not been for the snowbank, there might have been “a bad accident.”