The South became something of a disaster area during the recent snowstorm, but the much more prepared Northeast could be facing its own troubles in the winter's duration.
The latest bout of snow has shut down major interstate I-84, closed many other roads and put New Jersey in an official state of emergency--primarily because the Northeast is running low on salt, Gizmodo reported.
"It's been a very storm-filled winter, not only here but in the Midwest and New England, too," a New Jersey Department of Transportation spokesman told Gizmodo by phone. "So there's quite a few states with transportation agencies facing dwindling supplies right now. We've just been using it at a faster rate than it's able to be replenished."
The snowstorm started sweeping the northeastern states Tuesday night, leaving as much as a foot of the white stuff in parts of New England.
The official word from New Jersey's DOT is that an especially harsh winter has been taxing on the salt reserves, demand overtaking the limited supply.
New York state still has salt on hand that will be shipped to suffering areas in New York City and Long Island, which have depleted their salt reserves.
"We have a salt shortage for some parts of the state, primarily New York City and the Long Island area, because there have been so many storms this season already," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters on a conference call, Reuters reported. "The state does have a significant amount of salt on hand, we'll be shipping that salt around the state."
New York City has already used 346,000 tons of rock salt on roads and spent $57.3 million on snow removal, Department of Sanitation spokeswoman Belinda Mager told Reuters.
The amount of salt already used this season is almost the total tonnage spread on New York roads for all of last winter, she said.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy asked people who don't need to travel to stay home, while New Jersey's Chris Christie declared an official state of emergency for the Garden State.
Of 900,000 homes and businesses without power in the Midwest and Northeast, Pennsylvania saw the worst of it with 640,000 customers who lost power on Wednesday morning, according to Reuters.
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