On East Coast, Bracing for a Massive Storm

NEW YORK —  A massive snowstorm bearing down Sunday on the East Coast threatened to be one of the worst nor’easters in recent years, even though New York, Washington and other metropolitan areas near the coast were spared the 2 feet of snow originally predicted.

Winds gusted to 30 mph and heavy snow began falling late Sunday afternoon, as two major weather systems--a wet and windy storm from the south and a freezing air mass from Canada--converged and threatened to immobilize parts of Pennsylvania, New England and upstate New York with blizzard-like conditions.

Hours before the worst snow began falling, airlines canceled dozens of flights into the New York area’s Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark airports. Although the airports remained open, officials said they did not want to risk a sudden shutdown, which would leave thousands of passengers stranded at airports throughout the country.

“I wouldn’t have travel plans,” National Weather Service forecaster Mike Evans said. “If this thing pans out, it may be practically impossible for people to go anywhere.”

Predictions shifted by the hour Sunday as persistent warm air over New York blocked the colder Canadian air from bringing heavy snow into coastal areas, forecasters said.

Forecasts for the region varied widely: Washington had only rain Sunday, and while forecasters said New York and surrounding areas might get only 1 to 3 inches of snow by this morning, Boston could get 2 feet of the white stuff. Elsewhere, snow turned to freezing rain, and coastal areas from Maryland to northern New England were bracing for several days of coastal flooding.

Still, the huge winter storm is “going to be the worst nor’easter to affect the East Coast in the last three decades,” National Weather Service meteorologist Anthony Gigi said. When the final snowfall is recorded, “it’s still going to be in the top 10.”

The weather system is so large, forecasters said, that a second wave of snow is expected to begin today and continue falling steadily through Tuesday evening. By then, parts of Pennsylvania, the Catskills and Adirondacks region of New York and a large swath of northern New England could get more than 20 inches.

On Sunday, residents from Virginia to Maine flooded grocery and hardware stores, snapping up provisions to ride out a crippling storm. In Connecticut, hordes of shoppers crowded into stores only to find that all shovels, bags of salt and snow blowers had sold out the day before.

In the Elmhurst section of Queens, shoppers cleaned out a Super Stop and Shop Store, leaving shelves empty of milk, bread, soda and chips, even as word began spreading that the snowfall might not be as bad as expected. “This is end-of-the-world buying you’re experiencing here this afternoon. It’s nuts,” one man said. “But I’ll believe the forecast when I see it.”

No one seemed to be taking the revised forecast for granted. As heavy snow began falling, New York sanitation workers and transit officials were on high alert, waiting to see how much damage the storm did during the night.

In New York, Port Authority officials who had been criticized for lax attention to snow removal from airports during a December blizzard vowed to be ready for this one.

“This city is as prepared as it possibly could be,” Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said, noting that more than 2,000 sanitation trucks and thousands of pounds of salt are ready to remove snow and ice from city roadways. “Now, we just have to see what happens.”