New York City finally gets notable snow

Major cities on the East Coast broke a snow drought of sorts Tuesday while other parts of the U.S. struggled with perilously low temperatures that closed schools, cut power and likely contributed to deaths by cold exposure.

New York City’s Central Park recorded more than an inch (2.54 centimeters) of snow in a single day for the first time since 2022, the National Weather Service said, while Philadelphia’s 715-day streak without a similar amount ended, too.

Slightly more than 100,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power, most of them in Oregon, Texas and Louisiana, after widespread outages that started last weekend. Portland General Electric warned that the threat of freezing rain could delay restoration efforts.

Schools were closed for students in Portland and other major cities, including Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Memphis, Tennessee, across New England and in the Washington, D.C., region. Federal offices in and around the nation’s capital were also closed as roughly 2 inches (5.08 centimeters) of snow hit the area.

The storms and frigid temperatures affected everything from air travel to NFL playoff games to Iowa’s presidential caucuses, and were also the cause of several deaths.

At least four people in the Portland area died, including two people from suspected hypothermia. Another man was killed after a tree fell on his house and a woman died in a fire that spread from an open-flame stove after a tree fell onto an RV.

In Wisconsin, the deaths of three homeless people in the Milwaukee area were under investigation, with hypothermia the likely cause, officials said.

A Kentucky State Police helicopter rescued four campers stranded atop Courthouse Rock in the Red River Gorge area on Monday,…