People admire the snow in Times Square on February 22, 2026 in New York City. RYAN MURPHY / AFP
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Sunday, February 22, ordered the shutdown of the city's entire traffic network for all but emergency travel as a massive snowstorm began to hit the Northeast United States.
Tens of millions of Americans from the US capital Washington to the northern state of Maine prepared for up to two feet (60 centimeters) of snow forecast in some areas.
The National Weather Service (NWS) said blizzard conditions would "quickly materialize" from Maryland up to southeastern New England, making travel "extremely treacherous." Snow could fall at a rate of two to three inches per hour at the peak of the storm, with nearly 54 million people in its path, it said.
On Sunday evening, the storm had already begun to hit New York, slashing visibility to the extent that the skyscrapers of Wall Street were barely visible from the adjacent borough of Brooklyn.
