NEW YORK: The northeastern United States was walloped by a fierce winter storm on Saturday that threatened to drop more than two feet (60 cm) of snow while packing high winds, prompting governors in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other states to declare states of emergency.

The Nor’easter, which moved up the East Coast after forming in the Atlantic Ocean off the Carolinas, blanketed a large swath of New England with heavy snowfall, with some coastal areas of New Jersey already recording 15 inches (38 cm) of accumulation.

“The combination of heavy snow rates and strong winds will produce dangerous blizzard conditions across portions of the Mid-Atlantic and New England coasts,” the National Weather Service said in a notice on Saturday.

The governors who declared states of emergency warned of likely power outages. The storm has led airlines to cancel nearly 6,000 flights through the weekend.

“This storm is looking like it could be one for the record books,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in a CBS TV interview on Saturday. “We are not only expecting a whole lot of snow, but it is going to come down really quick in the most intense hours.”

Wu said Boston, forecast to possibly get more than 2 feet of snow, had more than 900 plows and salt spreaders out clearing the roads on Saturday morning. The National Weather Service has issued a blizzard warning for the Boston metropolitan area and its nearly 4.9 million residents, predicting “whiteout conditions” and damaging winds.