Four dead as ice and blowing snow make highways treacherous across the Northeast

From:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/12/02/nati
onal1853EST0699.DTL

Four dead as ice and blowing snow make highways treacherous across the
Northeast

The Associated Press   Tuesday, December 2, 2003

(12-02) 15:53 PST (AP) --

A sudden burst of snow and freezing rain swept across wide swaths of the
Northeast on Tuesday, glazing roads and bridges and causing hundreds of
traffic accidents. Four people were killed on the roads.

Accumulations were light in most places, but the blowing snow created
blizzard-like conditions that cut visibility and made pavement slippery
across parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode
Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire.

Several major Connecticut highways were closed, and traffic was snarled on
nearly every major highway in Massachusetts. Some New Jersey highways were
slicked with a mixture of snow and freezing rain.

"If you wanted to go somewhere, it wasn't happening. I know. I tried. You
just had to sit there," said New Jersey State Police Lt. Al Della Fave.

Traffic backups as long as 20 miles clogged major arteries around Trenton,
N.J. Wrecks closed several highways in Pennsylvania.

"I would call it a dusting," said Pennsylvania State police Sgt. Tim Steel.
"The snow accumulation was not the issue. It was the visibility and slick
roadways."

In central New York, several school districts were closed west of Syracuse,
where the National Weather Service said 4 to 8 inches of snow fell. Schools
were closed or had delayed openings in parts of Connecticut.

A tractor-trailer rig crossed a median south of Albany, N.Y., and killed a
motorist. State police said the truck driver told them slippery pavement
contributed to the wreck. Another motorist was killed near Rochester in
western New York, police said.

In Connecticut, a Bridgeport man was killed when his pickup spun out of
control and struck a median, state police said. A New Jersey motorist was
killed when he lost control of his vehicle on the Garden State Parkway,
police said.

Blowing snow may have to blame for a chain-reaction wreck involving more
than a half-dozen tractor-trailers and several cars on Interstate 80 in
central Pennsylvania, state police said. Several people required hospital
treatment.