Seven Die In East Coast Storms

A storm blanketed parts of the northeastern United States with heavy snow and slush Monday, just a week after another snowstorm pounded the region.

At least seven deaths were blamed on the storm and scattered school closings were reported from North Carolina to Maine. Some flights were canceled or delayed at Boston's Logan International Airport, spokesman Phil Orlandella said. Portland International Jetport in Maine also had delays and cancellations.

The heaviest snowfall was in northern Vermont, where the Jay Peak ski area recorded 38 inches by Monday morning.

As much as 18 inches of snow had fallen at Syracuse, New York, with 13 inches in parts of Maine and New Hampshire.

Last week's storm had piled snow more than four feet deep in parts of New Hampshire, and another storm is forecast for this Wednesday and Thursday, although rain was more likely than snow.

"We are on kind of a conveyor belt of little systems going by every several days," said meteorologist Alan Rezik in Charleston, West Virginia.

The storm — called a nor'easter for the circulation that brings wind blowing in off the ocean — had moved up the East Coast and Appalachians, soaking parts of the Carolinas and dropping 10 inches of snow in the mountains of West Virginia, before reaching New England on Sunday.

The storm blacked out some 14,000 customers in Springfield, Massachusetts, Monday morning, Western Massachusetts Electric Co. reported. Power had been restored to about 16,000 customers who were blacked out by the storm in North Carolina, utilities said.

A 52-year-old local prosecutor died of a heart attack Monday in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, while shoveling snow, police said.

Traffic accidents on slippery roads killed six people Sunday in Pennsylvania. Five of them were killed when the sport utility vehicle in which they were riding went out of control on an icy road and collided with a snowplow, police said. None of the victims was wearing a seat belt. Three companions survived.