A fast-moving cold front will swept across New York City this week, bringing with it gusty winds and snow showers.

While there wasn’t much accumulation, the cold was strong enough to create squalls that limited visibility and travel, according to the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. 

The storm, called a clipper, brought its heaviest snow to the Great Lakes region. A few spots in northern Maine got 6-12 inches of snow. The hardest-hit areas of upstate New York, where more than 65 inches fell in some places during the Thanksgiving Week lake-effect storm, also saw additional snow from the clipper.

Because a clipper moves quickly and the Great Lakes have cooled a bit, it is unlikely to last much longer. By next week, below-normal temperatures should start to give way to more seasonable weather.

Blustery Thanksgiving

Just as people in the U.S. were brining and basting roasted turkey and getting ready for the year’s biggest eating holiday, parts of the Great Lakes region were pummeled with almost 3 feet of snow.

Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York were hit hard by intense snow and dangerously cold temperatures, with significant travel disruptions experienced throughout the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

An Arctic cold front blasted through the Midwest and northern Great Plains just after Thanksgiving, hitting some areas with a wind chill that dropped below -30F (-34C). Lake effect snow warnings were in place for the hardest-hit areas.

A record-setting 80 million people were expected to travel mostly by car and plane between Nov. 26 and Dec. 2, according to AAA.
More than 2.7 million people went through airport checkpoints on the eve of Thanksgiving on Wednesday, a 40% increase from the prior year, the Transportation Security Administration reported.

Wintertime insurance concerns

Any extreme weather can wreak havoc on properties and their owners, especially when buildings are ill-prepared or rundown.  Some common winter home repair challenges include:

  • Furnace or boiler breakdowns;
  • Peeling paint;
  • Burst pipes;
  • Roof, gutter or window problems;
  • Mold;
  • Ice dams; and
  • Flooding.
The insurance coverage experts at FC&S field a high volume of frozen-pipe claim questions during the winter, “particularly in situations where the insured has gone someplace warmer for a while, left the house unattended, and returned to a flooded residence,” FC&S Executive Editor Christine G. Barlow wrote in an article for Claims magazine. “Exactly how the house was left is critical to whether or not coverage exists.”

Home insurance policies often exclude damage from freezing unless two conditions exist: The insured had to either maintain heat in the building, or shut off the water supply and drain all systems and appliances of water.

“With cold weather," Barlow wrote, "as long as the insured has taken reasonable steps to protect the property in his absence, there is coverage from damage due to frozen pipes.”

PropertyCasualty360.com staff writers contributed to this report.

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