East and West coasts prepare for new rounds of snow in US

PORTLAND: Storms that have turned roads into icy death traps, frozen people to death from Oregon to Tennessee and even sent a plane skidding off a taxiway were expected to sock both coasts with another round of weather chaos on Friday.

New York City — which only on Tuesday saw its first snow in more than two years — was in the headlights as the National Weather Service laid out warnings of a possible 3 to 5 inches (7.6 to 12.7 centimetres) of snow through Friday in the state and portions of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, an American Airlines plane slid off a snowy taxiway in Rochester, New York, after a flight from Philadelphia. No injuries were reported.

On the West Coast, Oregon’s governor declared a statewide emergency Thursday night after requests for aid from multiple counties “as they enter the sixth day of severe impacts” from weather marked by freezing rain.

Thousands of residents have been without power since Saturday in parts of Oregon’s Willamette Valley after an ice storm caused extensive damage.

“We lost power on Saturday, and we were told yesterday that it would be over two weeks before it’s back on,” said Jamie Kenworthy, a real estate broker in Jasper in Lane County.

“We do have a generator that we got last year, and right now it’s running an oil plug-in heater,” she said. “We also have a natural gas stove, and I’ve been running two of the burners to try to help heat up the house.”