Next question: Will Trump approve request for federal assistance?
By Christopher Shea and Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current
Stay off the roads (at least until noon today).
Snowed in for the duration (photo by Will Collette)
That was Gov. Dan McKee’s message to all Rhode Islanders as a nor’easter with “peak blizzard conditions” shut down the state Monday.
The National Weather Service office in Norton, Massachusetts, announced at 7 p.m. that total snow accumulation of 37.9 inches was at Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport in Warwick. Before Monday, the greatest single snowstorm on record was 28.6 inches on Feb. 6-7, 1978.
The daily snowfall of 35.5 inches broke the record one–day snowfall, which was 19.0 inches set during the blizzard of Jan. 8, 1996.
“I was around in the Blizzard of ’78 — this is a remarkable difference,” McKee told reporters gathered at the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency’s Cranston headquarters Monday afternoon. “This is the biggest snowstorm that we have ever seen.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: According to one website offering snow estimates by address, Humberto dumped two feet, eight inches of snow on my backyard. Cathy and I rode out the Blizzard of '78 in Providence and will no doubt ride this one out, too. - Will Collette
McKee declared a state of emergency on Sunday that continues till Tuesday at 7 a.m., including a travel ban across the state for passenger vehicles and tractor trailers. Most Rhode Islanders have complied and stayed off the roads, but the governor said there have been people “who are out there unnecessarily clogging our roads and are putting others’ safety at risk.”
State offices will also remain closed Tuesday, McKee said. Earlier in the day on Monday, the Rhode Island General Assembly announced that it has canceled House and Senate floor sessions, along with all committee meetings that were scheduled for Tuesday. Most committee hearings are now being rescheduled for Tuesday, March 3.
As of noon Monday, Rhode Island State Police troopers responded to 133 disabled vehicles across the state’s highways, Lt. Col. John Allen confirmed to Rhode Island Current. That included 15 crashes.
State Police have cited 24 vehicles for violating the travel ban, which carries an $85 ticket for the first offense.
Allen said State Police have also been dealing with “several disabled tractor-trailers” on the highways, which are halting the state’s response to the storm. As of noon, he said there were two trucks stuck near the Connecticut border, blocking snow plows.
“Traffic is at a standstill,” Allen said.
McKee said he had spoken with a mayor of one community who said that people were attempting to drive and abandoning their cars when they got stuck. His office confirmed it was Providence.
“Yes, that has been happening in Providence,” Josh Estrella, a spokesperson for Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, said in a phone call Monday around 12:15 p.m.
Providence issues over 1,200 parking tickets
Estrella didn’t have an exact count of the number of cars stuck on the road, but he said there were over 20 stuck cars and that the city has “crews that are going to them to try to dig them out.”
The mayor’s office echoed the governor’s sentiment to stay in place, as even snowplows were not able to brave the roads late Monday morning into early afternoon. Estrella said that, starting from around 9 a.m., the city’s fleet of snowplows — 60 municipal vehicles and 30 contracted ones — paused work because whiteout conditions made driving unfeasible.
“You just straight up cannot see right now,” Estrella said, noting that the plows would resume work once whiteout conditions end — not something that would happen on an exact timeline.
“We were plowing throughout the night,” Estrella said, adding that the city was pre-treating roads all day Sunday ahead of the snow’s arrival.
The city’s parking ban went into effect on 3 p.m. Sunday, and so far, the city has issued 1,273 tickets — a gargantuan number compared to storms past.
“It’s almost triple the amount of citations we issued during the big storm a month ago,” Estrella said.
Around noon, the city had also towed 316 cars, Estrella said.
This year, the Smiley administration also chose to increase the number of parking lots available for permitted residents who normally park on the city’s streets, bringing the total lots to 16.
“They’ve been working really well,” Estrella said. “Some of them are getting filled up, but a lot of them still have capacity.”
There’s also parking at the convention center available for $10 for the storm’s duration, Estrella said — “With the caveat, though, at this point, we do not recommend anyone to drive to the convention center,” he said.
The scenes evoke the Blizzard of 1978, when the many highways became parking lots of abandoned cars covered in snow — including the Washington Bridge in Providence.
“That was not a good situation, we do not want to repeat that,” McKee said.
As of early afternoon, snow accumulations of 35 inches in North Kingstown, 33.5 inches in Providence and 29 inches in Narragansett were reported, according to the National Weather Service. Five of the state’s six airports — excluding Quonset Point in North Kingstown because McMinn said the wind sensor went offline for several hours overnight and early this morning — reached blizzard criteria. A blizzard is defined as a storm with sustained winds of at least 35 mph combined with falling or blowing snow that reduces visibility to less than a quarter mile. The weather service warned wind gusts could reach up to 75 mph.
Trained spotters in Portsmouth and Smithfield reported 28.2 and 26 inches of snow respectively as of 6 p.m.
“It’s a historical nor’easter for sure,” said Kevin Cadima, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service. “It’s not something we see every year — not even every five years.”
McKee’s emergency declaration and travel ban will remain in effect overnight, McKee said during the 4:30 p.m. update.
“We will reassess the conditions in the morning to determine when those end,” he said.
McKee is scheduled to provide his next storm update at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Over 40,000 customers without power
Time will be needed in order to restore power across much of southern and central Rhode Island. As of 12:45 p.m., Rhode Island Energy reported over 40,000 customers across the state were without power, equal to 5% of its 770,000 customers statewide.
Greg Cornett, president of Rhode Island Energy, said the company has nearly 200 crews stationed across the state “that are ready to get out and provide restoration as quickly as we can.” But because of the extreme windgusts, those crews can only wait before they can get out and restore power.
“This is going to be a multi-day outage for some folks,” Cornett said.
Cornett said during the 4:30 p.m. storm update that hospitals and nursing homes will be first priority as crews begin restoring power.
“We will not cease work until the last customer is restored,” he said.
State officials similarly anticipate it will take a while to have every highway lane open. Delivering that message was not the state’s longtime transportation chief, Peter Alviti Jr., who is set to retire at the end of the week.
Instead, it was his incoming interim successor, Robert Rocchio.
McKee said Alviti is actively working through the storm, including calling for a 4 a.m. meeting Monday. Rocchio’s presence was in order to “make sure that we’re transitioning into the new leadership.”
Rhode Island’s all-Democratic congressional delegation is urging the Trump administration to make assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) available to the state, if requested, to support post-storm recovery.
“There is no reason FEMA cannot utilize the more than $9 billion currently in the Disaster Relief Fund, which continues to be available during a shutdown,” they wrote in a letter issued Monday.
McKee said he is aware of the letter and is preserving records in case the state seeks federal reimbursement.
FEMA last approved assistance for Rhode Island under the Biden administration in March 2024 following severe flooding that struck the state in December 2023 and January 2024.
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Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.
