Dave Jacobs tries to shovel out his car so he could head to Mad River ski area on Monday, March 7, 2011 in Montpelier, Vt. The National Weather Service says the winter storm that’s whacking northern Vermont is going to be one for the record books. Meteorologist Bruce Taber says 20.6 inches of snow has fallen at the Burlington International Airport and it’s supposed to keep snowing through the early afternoon. He says some parts of northern Vermont could get up to 30 inches of snow. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)RODRIQUE NGOWI, Associated Press
BOSTON – A powerful storm stunned New England and northern New York with a late-winter wallop, burying parts of the region in more than 2 feet of snow, hampering efforts to reach a small plane that crashed after the pilot reported icing problems and dropping rain that swelled rivers and swept away houses.
The winter blast also stopped commuters in their tracks on ice-covered highways and contributed to the death of a 2-year-old Danville, Vt., boy who died Monday night after being struck in his driveway by a snowplow driven by a relative.
Maine officials said the plane, a four-seat Diamond DA-40, went down near the Canadian border Monday afternoon, killing one person and injuring another. State wardens had to use snowmobiles to respond to the area, where most of the logging roads hadn’t been plowed, said Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Public Safety Department. A Canadian search and rescue helicopter reached the site Monday night and airlifted the injured person to a hospital in Canada.
The storm pushed the seasonal snow total in notoriously wintry Buffalo, N.Y., an inch past 100. Burlington, Vt., registered its biggest March snowfall on record, at 25.8 inches as of Monday night. In southern New England, flooding closed roads and cut off neighborhoods as rain melted snow or fell on frozen ground with no place to drain but overtaxed rivers.