thank goodness the governor just made the call yesterday, saying look, i want everybody off the roads at noon. i m going to shut down the t at 3:30. you don t have a choice. that allowed the plows to get out there and get major headway on this storm. now it s very, very hard to keep up with. i was out here earlier. and my footprints are right there. now they re completely covered up. so we have 2 inch answer hour coming down. obviously we re at the boston commons so, folks are out here, enjoying the snowfall. let s face it. this is just a beautiful sight out in through here if you don t have to be driving in it, which is exactly what we don t want people to do. now, because of the wind that is picking up as well, we ve had hurricane-force gusts on nantucket island, we are starting to see power outages now in massachusetts alone, up to 30,000 plus without power. we re afraid that s going to continue to go up. we ve got long island, connecticut, rhode island, new hampshire, massachusetts
on ward. this is what s causing the power outages. just gusted to 50 in boston. notice the wind direction, due north. the cold air from maine is on the way. temperatures in maine are single digits. we re in the 20s in boston and even new york city dropping down to the 20s. as far as the wind chill temperature goes, negative numbers. it s ugly out there to be trapped in your car or thinking about shoveling. you re not going to want to do that until the sun is out. again, tomorrow morning early in the morning the storm pulls away as we go throughout the overnight tonight. it really begins to crank. that will be the peak of it. right now until 5:00 a.m. or so. the winds will start to relax from west to east across new england. snowfall amounts. i had boston in the 24 and 30. it s looking tough. they didn t really get that heavy, heavy snow band like some
joining us now is nbc news meteorologist bill cairns. bill, what is the latest at this hour? well, melissa we are watching this storm maturing, if we want to call it that. it is growing into intensity. now it is becoming a full-fledged blizzard. in the last hour, about 50,000 people have lost power. and we re going to continue to add to that number to the hundreds of thousands throughout the overnight. that s the worst part of this. losing power in the middle of a winter storm when you don t know how long it s going to be until the power crews can a, get through two or three feet of snow to turn your power back on. let me show you a cool image of the storm. this is the imagery i show you during hurricane season. it almost looks like a hurricane. the spinning l is where the center of the storm is, now just south of massachusetts and cape cod. and the way it works is all of the warm air gets sucked into the storm. and on the back side, all the cold air comes in behind it. and that s wh
declared in new york, massachusetts, rhode island, and connecticut, and a limited state of emergency was declared in maine. in connecticut, the governor banned all non-emergency vehicles from the highways. in massachusetts, all cars were ordered off the roads this afternoon. the archdiocese of boston urged people attending mass on sunday to use caution and prunes. and meteorologists expect this storm to leave behind 1 to 3 feet of snow. when you think of snow and rain and sleet and gloom of night, you think of the post office, right? or rather the post office creed. here in new york, you can see it there. see it? just above the colonnade at the famous james a. farley post office. neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
and some shoreline residents in massachusetts have been asked to evacuate tonight. in neighboring connecticut, that state s governor, dan malloy has also issued a ban on all non-emergency motor vehicle traffic. and that ban took effect earlier this evening. and rhode island s governor lincoln chafee has taken similar measures, ordering cars off the roads instate as well. the storm has been blamed for this 19-car pileup and is causing travel problems in the air as well. at this point more than 4,000 flights in and out of the northeast have been canceled. new york city s airports remain officially open at this hour, but most flight activity has ended for the night. already just a few hours into this storm, more than 10,000 electric customers in the northeast have been left without power. and tonight the national guard reports that more than a thousand national guardsmen have been activated in connecticut, massachusetts, and in new york as this region prepares for the worst. joining us no