2nd snowstorm of the week hits Northeast

BOSTON - December 30, 2012 (WPVI) -- A widespread winter storm dumped snow over the Northeast and parts of Ohio on Saturday, just days after the regions were hit by another storm moving from the nation's midsection.

The National Weather Service expected up to a foot of snow in parts of southern New England, with the heaviest snowfall possibly in Providence, R.I., and Boston, which declared parking bans to allow snow removal vehicles to clean the streets. Winter storm warnings were in effect in parts of those states and in Connecticut.

New York City and Philadelphia saw a mix of rain and snow as the storm moved in from the west. In Ohio, Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati saw about 2 to 5 inches of snow by Saturday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

"Expect those accumulations to kind of work their way northeastward through much of New York state and much of New England," weather service meteorologist Brian Hurley said.

Drivers throughout the regions were warned to be cautious. Officials lowered the speed limit on much of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, about 300 miles from the Ohio state line to east-central Pennsylvania, from 65 mph to 45 mph.

About 20 vehicles piled up in a storm-related chain-reaction crash on Interstate 93 in New Hampton, N.H., police said, and five people were injured.

In Albany, N.Y., a regional jet skidded into a snow bank at the airport and became stuck, temporarily stranding passengers en route to Chicago. The 66 passengers and four crew members aboard the GoJet Airlines flight, operating as United Express, were put on a bus and sent back to the airport. There were no injuries, and the incident didn't cause any other flight delays, airport authority spokesman Doug Myers said.

Flights at Philadelphia's airport, mostly arrivals, were delayed about an hour, spokeswoman Stacy Jackson said.

Parts of southern Indiana saw 6 to 8 inches of snow from the storm, some in areas that had received more than a foot from a blizzard earlier in the week.

That blizzard was part of a storm system that dumped more than a foot of snow in some places and has been blamed for at least 16 deaths. It also spawned more than a dozen tornadoes in Alabama, the National Weather Service said.

But Saturday's snow wasn't as heavy as that of the previous storm, the weather service said.

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