At least one dead in U.S. blizzard, major travel problems

Tuesday, January 27, 2015, 1:12 PM - At least one person has died in the midst of an intense nor'easter that all but shut down travel across the U.S. northeast.

Police in Long Island say a 17-year-old out tubing with friends died after crashing into a light pole, according to the Associated Press. He was pronounced dead in hospital.

It's the first casualty of the storm, which put tens of millions of Americans under a winter weather warning of some kind.

More than 4,600 flights into or out of the United States have been cancelled, the vast majority of them in the northeast, where more than 90 per cent of flights were listed as cancelled in some areas.

States of emergency were declared in several states, along with travel bans forbidding non-essential travel in some cities, ahead of what was expected to be an epic storm of historic proportions.

By Tuesday morning, some U.S. forecasters were walking back comments suggesting the storm would be one for the record books.

"The storm has moved further east and will be departing faster than our forecasts of the past two days," The National Weather Service in New York wrote on its Facebook page. "The result is much less snow than previously predicted for the western half of our region. The heaviest of the snow will be over Long Island and southern Connecticut with lighter snow elsewhere through the morning hours."

Travel bans in the tri-state area were being lifted early Tuesday, and New York City announced the resumption of service, which had been scaled back after 7 p.m., but most schools declared Tuesday to be a snow day yesterday, even before the storm had arrived.

New York City had only received around 16 cm as of 7 a.m. Tuesday, but parts of Long Island and Massachusetts were much harder hit.

But although the storm did not impact New York as badly as originally thought, other states were slammed with more than 60 cm of snow and powerful winds.

In Massachusetts, strong storm surge of more than a metre caused flooding in some coastal communities, and power was cut off completely to Nantucket Island.

Several coastal homes were reported damaged, and there was at least one instance of a seawall breach.

Canadian impact:

This nor'easter's effects reaches even into the Atlantic provinces, with some parts of the Maritimes in for more than 40 cm.

Travel has been heavily impacted, and widespread closures and service interruptions have been reported.

Get our full Canadian nor'easter coverage here.

TUNE IN: We will have on-the-ground coverage from Mark Robinson in New York, Krissy Vann in Moncton and Nathan Coleman in Halifax.

WATCH BELOW: The science behind nor'easters: