For Northeast blizzard, everything was just right to roll up a monster snowfall

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For Northeast blizzard, everything was just right to roll up a monster snowfall

2026-02-24 06:24 Last Updated At：06:30

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nor’easter smacking much of the Northeast with nearly 3 feet of snow in places is as classic and powerful a blizzard as you can get, the strongest in a decade and up there with the most intense in history, meteorologists said.

The nor'easter quickly intensified to easily qualify as a “ bomb cyclone " and featured thundersnow and lightning, two things rarely seen in snowstorms. And while it was paralyzing and potentially dangerous for millions along the Eastern Seaboard, meteorologists found themselves rhapsodizing over its combination of power and beauty.

The storm hit the “Goldilocks situation" of just the right temperature for wet, heavy snow — any warmer and its precipitation wouldn't have fallen as snow. Any colder and there wouldn't have been as much moisture in the air to feed that snowfall, said Owen Shieh, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center in Maryland.

It also followed the ideal track for maximum snowfall. A little farther inland and it would have lost its warm ocean energy; a bit farther out to sea, and the heaviest snow would have fallen over the water, said Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground and now meteorologist at Yale Climate Connections.

“I’ve always been fascinated about how Mother Nature figures out how to put all the pieces together in order to maximize the most extreme outcome,'' said private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ”I think you could make a pretty good case that this is on par with some of the most impressive blizzards in history."

“There’s this sweet spot that can generate your highest snow totals and that’s kind of where we’re at, so in a way that kind of adds to that classic-ness of it,” Shieh said.

At 33.5 inches (85.1 centimeters) by about midday Monday, Providence set its all-time record for snowfall, beating the previous record set in 1978, and it was still snowing, the National Weather Service office in Boston reported. But the highest total reported so far was in Warwick, Rhode Island, which barely passed 3 feet at 36.2 inches (92 centimeters).

Islip Airport in Long Island, New York, and Somerset and Berkeley, Massachusetts, all had 31 inches (78.7 centimeters), and at least 19 weather stations in five states recorded 2 feet (61 centimeters) or more of snow. Central Park in New York City had more than 19.1 inches (48.5 centimeters), while Philadelphia reached 14 inches (35.6 centimeters), according to preliminary weather service calculations.

Winds topped out at 83 mph (133.6 kilometers per hour) in Nantucket, Massachusetts, with several spots on Cape Cod measuring hurricane-force winds.

And it's the type of wet heavy snow that often triggers heart attacks, Shieh said.

“Just a word of caution for those who are going to be out shoveling the snow, that this will be easy to overexert yourself on,” Shieh said. “So take frequent breaks.”

Meteorologists measure how strong a storm gets by the atmospheric pressure at its center. The lower it goes, the stronger. This storm intensified quickly, dropping 39 millibars in 24 hours, easily passing the threshold of 24 millibars per day drop to be classified as “bombogenesis” or a “bomb cyclone,” Shieh and Maue said.

“I guess you could call it a superbomb,” Maue said.

Winter storms like this get their energy from the contrast in temperature between the cold air on land and the warm moist air over the ocean along with heat energy from the seas themselves, Masters said.

“This is about as intense as you can get,” Maue said. Its lowest pressure of 966 millibars would be a Category 2 hurricane if it were tropical, he said. He called it “a hurricane with snow."

“It is a classic in terms of not only the snowfall rates, but the intensity of the storm itself,” said former weather service director Louis Uccellini, who wrote meteorological textbooks on winter storms, comparing it to storms in 2016 and 1961. “It was just an amazing storm system.”

A study last summer found that in a warming world, the strongest nor'easters were becoming significantly stronger.

MIT's Judah Cohen said that a stretched polar vortex — when ultra-cold air usually penned up near the North Pole pushes further south — started just before the storm and was a factor. And he had a separate study last year finding these polar vortex stretches are increasing with a warmer Arctic.

An unusual combination of winter and summer weather — thundersnow and lightning — flashed at times with this storm, thrilling meteorologists on air. That's because “you only see it in the most intense winter storms,” Masters said.

Weather Channel extreme weather meteorologist Jim Cantore was reporting live from Plymouth, Massachusetts, when lightning struck nearby — the same place he was at 11 years ago when lightning struck during a storm he was reporting on.

“Holy smokes. We got it again baby,” Cantore screamed. “In the same place. Unbelievable.”

Meteorologist Matthew Cappucci, who grew up in Plymouth and said he yearned for thundersnow, rhapsodized about how "really cool” it was that this winter storm sparked a lightning strike to a New York City skyscraper and to wind turbines off the Massachusetts coast. Shieh said the weather service doesn't have reports of thundersnow in New York.

Meteorologists like Cappucci, Cohen and Uccellini, who love snow and extreme weather, gushed over satellite images of the storm, where they could see all the features that made this one come together perfectly.

Shieh said it looked almost too good, like something from a disaster movie.

“It almost looks like CGI (computer generated image)," he said.

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Security forces keep up fight with cartel gunmen a day after the Mexican military killed a drug lord

TAPALPA, Mexico (AP) — A day after the Mexican army killed the country's most powerful drug lord, the picturesque town where it happened was a study in contrasts.

Tourist shops in Tapalpa were open Monday, and workers were on the job. But gunshots also rang out, and in the street was a dead man lying beside a bullet-pocked vehicle.

Meanwhile, heavily armed Mexican security forces kept up their battle with cartel gunmen following the killing that sparked a surge in violence and put the country on edge. Cartel fighters continued to block roads as smoke rose on the outskirts of the town in the state of Jalisco.

More than 70 people died in the attempt to capture Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes and the aftermath, authorities said Monday. Known as as “El Mencho,” he was the notorious leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Mexico.

The body count taken by security officials included security forces, suspected cartel members and others. Officials did not offer details, and the circumstances of most of the deaths were unclear.

Oseguera Cervantes was the boss of one of the fastest-growing criminal networks in Mexico, known for trafficking fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine to the United States and staging brazen attacks against Mexican government officials. The organization responded to his death with widespread violence, including erecting more than 250 roadblocks across 20 states and setting fire to vehicles.

Oseguera Cervantes died after a shootout with the Mexican military. Mexican Defense Secretary Ricardo Trevilla said Monday that authorities had followed one of his romantic partners to his hideout in Tapalpa.

The cartel leader and two bodyguards fled into a wooded area where they were seriously wounded in a firefight. They were taken into custody and died on the way to Mexico City, Trevilla said.

In a different location in Jalisco, soldiers killed another high-ranking cartel member who Trevilla said was coordinating violence and offering more than $1,000 for every soldier killed.

The dead included 25 members of the Mexican National Guard who were killed in six separate attacks, Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch said.

Harfuch said some 30 criminal suspects were killed in Jalisco, and four others were killed in the neighboring state of Michoacan. Also killed were a prison guard and an agent from the state prosecutor’s office.

As the threat of more violence loomed, several Mexican states canceled school Monday, while local and foreign governments warned their citizens to stay inside.

The White House confirmed that the U.S. provided intelligence support to the operation to capture the cartel leader and applauded Mexico's army for taking down a man who was one of the most wanted criminals in both countries.

Mexico hoped the death of the world's biggest fentanyl traffickers would ease Trump administration pressure to do more against the cartels, but many people were anxious as they waited to see the powerful cartel's reaction.

The U.S. Embassy said via X that its personnel in eight cities and in the state of Michoacan would shelter in place and work remotely Monday. It warned U.S. citizens in many parts of Mexico to do the same.

Cars began circulating in Guadalajara before sunrise Monday with the start of the workweek, a notable change from Sunday, when Jalisco's state capital and Mexico's second-largest city was almost completely shut down as fearful residents stayed home.

More than 1,000 people were stuck overnight in Guadalajara’s zoo, where they slept in buses.

Luis Soto Rendón, the zoo’s director, said many had been trapped there since Sunday morning, when violence broke out in Jalisco and the surrounding states. Families concluded they could not return home in nearby states like Zacatecas and Michoacan.

“We decided to let people stay inside the zoo for their safety,” Soto said. “There are small children and senior citizens.”

José Luis Ramírez, a 54-year-old therapist, was in a long line of people waiting outside a pharmacy, one of the few businesses that were open Monday in Guadalajara. Families were buying food, medicine, water, diapers and baby formula, from pharmacists through a chained door.

It was Ramírez’s first time leaving the house since the violence erupted, but he struck a hopeful tone, saying that despite the bloodshed, civilians needed to move forward.

“We have to not think scared, but be cool-headed, like they say, and take things as they come,” he said.

Those who had to work carefully made their way across the city.

Irma Hernández, a 43-year-old hotel security guard in Guadalajara, normally takes public transportation to her job, but buses were not running, and she had no way to cross the city. Her bosses organized a private car to pick her up. Her family, she said, was staying at home, too scared to leave.

“I am worried because I don't know how to get home if something happens,” she said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded Mexico do more to fight the smuggling of fentanyl, threatening to impose more tariffs or take unilateral military action if the country does not show results.

The operation may also pave the way for more violence as rival criminal groups take advantage of the blow dealt to El Mencho's organization, said David Mora, Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group.

“This might be a moment in which those other groups see that the cartel is weakened and want to seize the opportunity for them to expand control and to gain control over Cartel Jalisco in those states,” he said.

Ever since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office, "the army has been way more confrontational, combative against criminal groups in Mexico,” Mora said. “This is signaling to the U.S. that if we keep cooperating, sharing intelligence, Mexico can do it. We don’t need U.S. troops on Mexican soil."

The U.S. State Department had offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest of El Mencho. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel began operating around 2009.

In February 2025, the Trump administration designated the cartel as a foreign terrorist organization. It has been one of the most aggressive cartels in its attacks on the military — including on helicopters — and is a pioneer in launching explosives from drones and installing mines.

At a blockade Monday on the outskirts of Tapalpa, 25-year-old Joel Ramírez and two friends were waiting for soldiers to clear a blockade of tree limbs. He hauls things in his pickup for a living and had not been able to get home since Sunday's violence.

“Everything seems calmer, but we were almost there and got stuck,” he said. “We're scared.”

Verza reported from Mexico City. Associated Press writer Fabiola Sánchez in Mexico City also contributed to this report.