Philly snow updates: City schools will be virtual Tuesday; city offices and courts will be open

If it wasn’t an actual blizzard, Philly’s biggest snowfall in a decade sure acted like one, and the weather the rest of this week isn’t expected to be particularly pleasant.

But in terms of disruption — not to mention aesthetics — this was in a wholly different category from the Jan. 25 siege of snow and ice. And the aftermath should not be anywhere near as punitive and burdensome.

Although the 14 inches measured officially at Philadelphia International Airport dwarfed the 9.3 inches of snow and sleet that accumulated in last month’s storm, Zach Schwartz, 33, was among those who found the picturesque snow more palatable than the attack of ice balls and an Arctic freeze.

Philadelphia's Office of Homeless Services said the city would maintain several 24-hour warming centers through Wednesday morning to help people stay out of the cold.

The city is already in a Code Blue, which is declared when precipitation is falling and temperatures are 32 degrees or lower, or when temperatures feel close to or below 20 degrees due to the wind chill.

During a Code Blue, the city sends outreach teams out 24 hours a day, looking for people without shelter and taking them inside. The designation also opens up 50 shelter beds, in addition to about 3,400 shelter beds available during the winter. Residents in emergency housing are also allowed to stay inside all day. (Some shelters require residents to leave in the morning and return at night.)

Mother nature’s above freezing temperatures largely aided Philadelphia’s snow removal operations Monday, but the city also adjusted its response after the prior storm cleanup left many residents chockfull of complaints.

Director of Clean and Green Initiatives Carlton Williams said the city secured three snow melters instead of just one, with two already on the road Monday, despite the much shorter notice of the storm.

“They're located throughout the city of Philadelphia, because quite frankly, from the last storm, we are running out of places to place snow,” said Williams in a news conference, referring to the dozens of snow drop off sites, such as the Navy Yard. “We needed to be able to put it in a location where it doesn't have to sit in somebody's neighborhood.”

Lee Paul, 36, was not ready to step out of her Wayne Avenue apartment complex in the middle of a blizzard. But her four-month-old puppy had other plans.

“I had to take Chay to go to the bathroom,” said Paul, hands in her pockets and dreading the cold.

She hates winter, but is happy that living in a building meant no shoveling was in her future.  

SEPTA has reopened its Center City trolley tunnel, and resumed service on more than 20 of its bus routes. However, Regional Rail service remained largely suspended as of Monday afternoon, SEPTA general manager Scott Sauer said.

"We're hoping to have some Regional Rail service restored later this afternoon," Sauer said Monday. "But I will caution: We will not be on a regular schedule."

Just before 3 p.m., the agency restored operations on its Manayunk/Norristown line, a representative said.

More than 130,000 households across the Philadelphia region lost power last night due to the snowstorm.

Philadelphia households have mostly recovered from power outages on Monday, according to Peco, with only 213 active outages this afternoon.

South Jersey still has around 75,000 households currently without power, according to Jersey Central Power and Light, but that number has slowly decreased since this morning.

At least 87 tress across the city were downed as a result of the storm as of Monday afternoon, and the city is working to determine which ones to prioritize clearing first, Parks and Recreation commissioner Susan Slawson said.

"We have four certified arborists that are actively inspecting reports of fallen trees to determine priority for clearance," Slawson said Monday. "Everything is not a priority."

Slawson asked for patience from city residents as the department works to clean up downed trees, and noted that some situations involving live wires require additional caution and coordination. Fallen trees blocking roadways, or those that have fallen on houses or cars, should be reported to 911, while those impacting power lines should be reported to Peco.

Ronald Barnard has been shoveling outside his Coulter Street home for two hours. At 69, snow clean up requires twice the effort, he said.

“It’s just a lot,” Barnard said pointing to the surrounding unplowed sidewalks and ice covered road. “This snow is easier to push than the snow in January, but it’s more than I expected for sure.” 

He likes doing the clean up himself. But when neighbors offer to help, he takes the chance to reminiscent about a better time, when “the city used to give us salt and even plow the two way street, but times have change.”

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker said at a Monday afternoon news conference it remained too early to determine when the city's snow emergency could be lifted, but officials hoped to have an update on the resumption of city operations later in the day.

In the meantime, Parker added, city residents should avoid unnecessary travel until further notice to allow crews to continue to clear the more than 2,500 miles of roadways in Philadelphia. Roughly 65% of streets had been treated in some way as of Monday afternoon — plowed, salted, or lifted, or some combination of the three — director of Clean and Green Initiatives Carlton Williams said.

"When there are fewer cars on the street, we give our crews more flexibility to do the job that we are asking them to do," Parker said.

Philadelphia hasn’t experienced a verified blizzard in 33 years, and it remains unclear whether this Sunday-Monday snow fest qualified for the honor.

According to NOAA guidelines, a blizzard requires “frequent winds of 35 mph or higher with considerable falling and/or blowing snow that frequently reduces visibility to 1/4 of a mile or less. These conditions are expected to prevail for a minimum of 3 hours.”

That’s a lot to ask for a snowstorm, and it is going to take considerable forensic work of poring through observations to determine whether those conditions were met in Philadelphia or elsewhere in the region, said Nick Guzzo, a meteorologist at the National Weahter Service Office in Mount Holly. (Incidentally, 20 inches of snow were measured on the office’s property.)

Light snow is lingering in the Philly region and could continue into the afternoon, but no additional accumulation is expected.

“What’s done is pretty much almost done,” said Amanda Lee, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, where 18 inches was measured Monday morning.

The potent coastal nor’easter that clocked South Jersey and areas along I-95 and generously layered several inches of snow throughout Philly’s neighboring counties in Pennsylvania is pulling away.

Almost all SEPTA services, besides some subway services, were temporarily suspended Monday due to the storm. But some are beginning to come back online.

Bus service is in the process of being restored as streets are cleared, the agency said.

The Center City Trolley Tunnel has reopened. The D and M lines are running on a modified service schedule, while Route G remains suspended.

Fresh powdery snow, perfect for snowballs, blanketed Wharton Square Park in South Philadelphia after Sunday night’s snowstorm. Laughter from the playground, shovels scraping concrete, and snowmen slowly rolling into form took over the park on Monday morning.

Two men in particular came with a mission: to build an igloo for their kids. Zach Schwartz, 33, and Josh Feist, 33, of Point Breeze shoveled a path to the playground, piling up a more than five-foot snow pile. Feist, who is a mason, helped stabilize the frame while Schwartz carved out the inside.

“We have a really close crew of families in the neighborhood, so we're here at the park like every day, no matter what. With the snow, we just have more fun things to do,” Schwartz said, who has lived in Philly since 2016. In recent memory, this storm had some of the most snowfall, Schwartz said, but that it doesn’t compare to the frozen snow of last month.

Several major Philadelphia arts institutions have announced closures due to emergency weather.

Early Monday, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, and Calder Gardens announced closures on their social media accounts.

The PMA said it'll reopen on Tuesday.

Multiple sections of the New Jersey Turnpike are experiencing major delays and closures after a series of accidents Monday morning amid whiteout conditions.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill extended a travel ban through noon, citing visibility issues, though those restrictions exclude the Turnpike and essential workers.

In an interview with Fox 5 New York early Monday, Sherrill said plowers were “down to pavement” on the Turnpike.

Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock said his coastal city of Victorian homes "looks beautiful" covered in the foot of snow that had fallen by Monday morning.

 "It looks like a snow globe," he said.

"We had a good amount," Mullock said, speaking by phone, from atop a tractor, which he said he was using to help plow out some neighbors. "There's a few individual homes where a tree took a power line. The tides were ok. We were a little nervous about that. Overall, I would say things are pretty good."

More than a foot of snow fell overnight across the Philadelphia region, though the Jersey Shore was hit hardest by a powerful winter storm that was still dropping heavy snow Monday morning.

Due to heavy snow bands, the totals varied widely. Ten inches of snow were recorded in Boothwyn Monday morning, while 15 inches dropped overnight in Mount Ephraim, Camden County.

Officially, 13.7 inches fell at Philadelphia International Airport as of 7 a.m.

A water main break may pose a threat to the water quality in Camden Monday morning, American Water Contract Services said. As a precaution, some areas of Camden are under a “boil water” advisory while crews assess the water supply.

The water main break occurred at Ninth and Jefferson Streets on Sunday night. In response, American Water was advising all residents living between Ferry Avenue and Collings Road in Camden, which includes the Fairview, Morgan-Village, and Centerville neighborhoods, to not drink or use tap water until further notice.

The advisory will remain in effect until repairs are complete and water quality is tested to be safe.

With an official snowfall of 13.7 inches measured at Philadelphia International Airport, the city’s seasonal total bumped to 29.8 inches.

Among the 142 winters in the period of record, this one now is tied for 27th place, and also is the snowiest since 2018.

You may have noticed snow has been scarce in recent winters, and this also will be the first one since 2021 with snowfall above the normal, which is 23.1 inches.

Amtrak canceled more than 30 trains on its Northeast Regional and Acela train lines on Monday morning due to the snowstorm. Keystone Service has been suspended until at least noon.

Alerts went out at 4 a.m. announcing a slew of cancellations and advising riders to book the next available train. Amtrak will notify impacted customers directly. Customers whose trains are cancelled can rebook or request refunds, without penalties, on Amtrak.com, through the Amtrak mobile app, or by calling the Amtrak Care Center at 1-800-USA-RAIL.

Amtrak will operate 55% of planned service Monday on the Northeast Regional rail service, 33% of planned Acela trains, and half of the planned trains on the Keystone Service trains, when it returns at noon.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Monday morning that New Jersey's travel ban would continue until noon as white out conditions were making it difficult to see, especially on major roads like the Garden State Parkway.

"It was an early morning call," she said, in an online interview with South Jersey weather forecaster Nick "NorEaster Nick" Pittman. "It was difficult to see the edge of the road where the guardrails were. We still have snow falling in a lot of parts of our state."

She said more than 200,000 people had lost power across New Jersey, but that more than half of them had already had power restored. "which is pretty shocking given how horrible the conditions are."

Scott Evans, Atlantic City's Fire Chief and head of Emergency Management, said flooding in the coastal city was not as bad as feared. "The flooding definitely underperformed in a good way," he said. "We'll take it any day."

He described it as "the low end of moderate" level of flooding, something Atlantic City is used to dealing with. The city had about a foot of snow by daylight, he said, with persistent high winds over night prompting numerous calls for "arcing wires."

At the 11 p.m. Sunday high tide through around 2:30 a.m., there was about 8 to 10 inches of water in "some of our lowest lying areas," he said, including Massachusetts Avenue, Bungalow Park and Lower Chelsea.

At Philadelphia International Airport, 604 flights had been canceled as of Monday morning, as snow blanketed the city. Another 42 flights were canceled for Tuesday, according to FlightAware, which tracks flights.

“Passengers should check on the status of their flights with their airlines—the airlines will also provide guidance on what passengers should do in the event their flights are cancelled,” said airport spokesperson Heather Redfern.

The airport also announced ticketing at Terminal A-West, B, and C and TSA checkpoints would be closed Monday.

As much as a foot of snow fell overnight across the Philadelphia region as heavy snowfall from a massive winter storm continues across the Delaware Valley.

Due to heavy snow bands, the totals varied widely. Ten inches of snow were recorded in Boothwyn Monday morning, while 11 inches dropped overnight in Mount Ephraim, Camden County.

Officially, 13.7 inches fell at Philadelphia International Airport as of 7 a.m. Here are more snowfall totals.

If you perceive the atmosphere for whatever reason has a grudge against weekends, that’s understandable.

Precipitation has fallen on six of the last seven weekends, with snowflakes making appearances in all of them, most emphatically on Jan. 25, when 9.3 inches of snow and sleet balls accumulated, and then refused to leave.

The storm rhythm actually is a quite common one, meteorologists say.