Storm caused by rapid drop in pressure leads to states of emergency in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Heavy snow and high winds pounded the US east coast along a front stretching from Maine as far south as North Carolina early on Thursday, knocking out power, icing over roadways and closing hundreds of schools.

The storm, the product of a rapid and rare sharp drop in barometric pressure known as bombogenesis that on Wednesday dumped snow on Florida’s capital Tallahassee for the first time in 30 years, was expected to last through the day.

States of emergency were in effect in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia and blizzard warnings from the Canadian border as far south as Virginia.

Much of the eastern United States is in the grip of a sustained cold spell that has frozen part of Niagara Falls, played havoc with public works and impeded firefighting in places where temperatures barely broke 20F (-6C).

Areas around Boston were forecast to see about one foot (30cm) of snow on Thursday, and the National Weather Service predicted a similar amount and wind gusts of up to 55mph (90km/h) in New York City.

Schools were ordered to close in both cities.

“This could bring some very dangerous conditions,” the New York mayor, Bill de Blasio, said late on Wednesday.

The 'bomb cyclone' heading for the eastern US – is that even a thing? Read more

“Both rush hours will be affected,” the Boston mayor, Marty Walsh, earlier told a news conference. “Be patient. With the amount of snow we’re getting here, we could be ploughing your street and a half hour later it could look like we haven’t been there.”

The private forecaster Accuweather said snow would fall quickly during the day, at a rate of several inches per hour, with the storm intensified by the bombogenesis effect. Also known as a bomb cyclone, the phenomenon occurs when a storm’s barometric pressure drops by 24 millibars in 24 hours.

The rare type of storm struck the US south-east on Wednesday, also dumping snow in parts of South Carolina and eastern Georgia, said the meteorologist Patrick Burke of the federal Weather Prediction Center.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Finley Bork, seven, sleds down a hill while being chased by a playful dog on a golf course at the Isle of Palms, South Carolina. Photograph: Mic Smith/AP

More than 35,000 customers were without power in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia early on Thursday, utilities reported online.

Part of US-13 at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia was closed because of high winds early on Thursday while state transportation departments throughout the region reported dozens of delays due to deteriorating road conditions.

Late on Wednesday night, a baggage car and two sleeper cars on an Amtrak train travelling from Miami to New York, with 311 passengers onboard, derailed as it was slowly backing into a station in Savannah, Georgia. No one was injured, an Amtrak spokesman said.

The cold has been blamed for at least nine deaths over the past few days, including those of two homeless people in Houston.