Dangerous winter storm brings blizzard conditions to parts of the East Coast

VPM | By Leila Fadel and Miriam Wasser

Published February 23, 2026 at 9:43 AM EST

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Millions of people along the East Coast are waking up this morning to heavy snow and high winds. The Northeast and parts of the mid-Atlantic are in the midst of a big winter storm, one that has already caused power outages. Some places are forecasted to have blizzard conditions with little visibility. WBUR reporter Miriam Wasser joins us now from one of our member stations in Boston. And she’s watching this winter storm from her window. Miriam, good morning.

MIRIAM WASSER, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.

FADEL: OK, so you’re in the middle of this. Tell me what you’re seeing outside your window and what’s happening throughout the region.

WASSER: Yeah, sure. So I live about 25 miles outside of Boston. And this is an area that’s supposed to get 18 to 24 inches by the time this storm ends later today.

FADEL: That’s a lot.

WASSER: I think it’s snowed about half a foot. Yeah. It’s snowed about half a foot overnight, and the National Weather Service is predicting about 1 to 3 inches per hour over the next few hours, so it should really start piling up soon. It’s also really windy, with gusts of up to 50 miles per hour in some areas. Elsewhere, the snow has been falling hard overnight. Parts of New York and coastal New Jersey already have more than a foot of snow.

FADEL: So what have states been doing to prepare?

WASSER: Yeah, ahead of this storm, the governors of several states in the region declared states of emergency and pleaded with the public to stay off the roads. Some even issued travel bans. That’s because between the heavy snow, wind and low visibility, the roads are just going to be a mess. Here’s Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey on this point.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MAURA HEALEY: Every car that gets stranded, runs down, slips, crashes, you are creating burden for our first responders, who may need to be deployed elsewhere.

WASSER: I’ll also note that schools are closed in much of the region, including all of Boston and New York City. And the website FlightAware shows that thousands of flights have been delayed or canceled at major airports like JFK, LaGuardia, and Logan in Boston.

FADEL: OK, so beyond travel, what are the other big concerns in the parts of the country that are dealing with these blizzard conditions?

WASSER: Yeah, I’d say one of the biggest concerns right now is prolonged power outages. This storm is bringing wet, heavy snow, which weighs down trees and branches and makes it more likely that they’ll fall on power lines. You know, we had a big storm in the region a couple of weeks ago. But that was fluffy, light snow. And so this, you know, according to local meteorologists, is just a totally different situation. I’ll say, I feel really grateful that I have power right now because elsewhere in Massachusetts, the utility companies are reporting that the electricity is out in more than 80,000 households right now.

FADEL: Wow.

WASSER: Yeah. And in New Jersey, more than 100,000 people are without power. And, Leila, you know, we often see power outages in big storms. But Olessa Stepanova of Eversource, which is one of the big utility companies out here, she told me that getting the lights back on could take hours, if not days in some instances.

OLESSA STEPANOVA: Because of the severity and the duration of the storm, there may be periods where our crews are simply unable to safely access damage.

WASSER: I’ll just add that I got a text from my utility company warning that some outages could take three to five days to fix. So in some, you know, the snow is forecasted to keep falling all day. And we’ll almost certainly see more outages. We’re also likely to see some coastal flooding. And then when the storm is over, we dig out.

FADEL: Miriam Wasser is a reporter at member station WBUR in Boston. Miriam, stay warm. And I hope the power stays on. Thank you.

WASSER: Thanks.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Leila Fadel

Leila Fadel is a host of Morning Edition, as well as NPR's morning news podcast Up First.

As a national correspondent, Fadel consistently reported on the fault lines of this divided nation. She flew to Minneapolis in the midst of the pandemic as the city erupted in grief and anger over the killing of George Floyd. She's reported on policing and race, on American Muslim communities and on the jarring inequities the coronavirus laid bare in the healthcare system. Her "Muslims in America: A New Generation" series, in collaboration with National Geographic, won the prestigious Goldziher Prize in 2019.

Previously, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought listeners to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.

She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.

Before joining NPR, Fadel covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.

Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.

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