Significant snowfall was impacting the eastern and southern regions of the United States during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. The weather event included snow, strong thunderstorms and gusty winds.

A foot of snow was predicted for sections of New England, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania through Tuesday morning. Forecasters noted that in Buffalo, New York fast falling snow had blanketed the area with 4.6-inches in just one hour at the City’s airport. Another 4-inches fell over the previous 4 in just one hour ending at 2 a.m. eastern time. The total snowfall since late Sunday was 10.2-inches.

While New York City appears to have been spared through Sunday, severe weather thunderstorm warnings were announced for the Big Apple for early Monday. The boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens will also be impacted.

Wind gusts in New York City could top off at around 45 mph and nearly 60 mph on Long Island.

Sleet and rain was the worst of it for much of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The storm started as snow but transitioned to rain overnight.

The severe weather event brought the same to the southeast on Sunday. Multiple states were covered with inches of snow and experienced severe thunderstorms and a118 mph tornado meandered through Florida. Thirty mobile homes were destroyed and 51 suffered major damage. Only three minor injuries were noted.

Wet roadways in the South, the result of heavy rain on Sunday, was expected to freeze on Monday, creating slippery conditions for drivers.

The southeast region including Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida were blasted on Sunday, causing blackouts, toppling trees and fences, and glazing roads making vehicular travel difficult.

Tens of thousands of electric utility customers were without power in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. More than an inch of snow an hour was dumped per hour in some regions of the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia, reported the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.

The weather event was making air travel extremely problematic in many sections of the South. The country’s hardest hit airport was Charlotte Douglas International, which still open as of dawn Sunday. More than 1,000 flights had been cancelled, more than 80 percent of the airport’s Sunday schedule Charlotte Airport is a major hub for American Airlines. At the Atlanta Airport, where Delta Airlines operates a main hub, more than 300 Sunday flights were canceled.

The situation deteriorated through Sunday, with air traffic stoppages a possibility for Washington, D.C.

Sections of North Carolina were alerted to winter storm warnings running until Monday morning. Ice storms were expected to be an issue in the central Carolinas, including the Charlotte metropolitan area.

By early Sunday, more than 100,000 electric utility customers were without power in Georgia, but the majority of the outages were in the northeast district of the Atlanta metropolitan area and in the northeast mountains of Georgia. About 50,000 customers were without power in South Carolina. As many as 11,000 utility customers were in the dark in North Carolina.

According to poweroutages.us, as of 9:55 a.m. eastern time on Monday, January 17, the worst outages were reported in:

• South Carolina 29,700
• North Carolina 27,737
• West Virginia 25,532
• Georgia 21,727
• Pennsylvania 16,441
• Massachusetts 13,648
• New York 12,918
• Virginia 12,468
• Texas 5,913

Severe snowstorms bad enough to cause hundreds if not thousands of power outages have wreaked havoc on sections of the United States since January 1. Snowstorms are common for this part of the year and power outages as the result of these storms are common occurrences. Many families throughout the United States are concerned with their safety during this period of the calendar. Being without power during blistering cold weather can be uncomfortable at best and tragic at worst. For Pease of mind many have turned to standalone generators to provide safety during hazardous severe weather events. APElectric has a robust inventory of standalone generators with the state of the art technology to assure that you and your family are not affected by outages. Visit the company’s website for more information on the products they have to offer and for any other information pertaining to what generator to select for your specific situation.