Spring seems far away for snowy Northeast

BOSTON — Snow and sleet blasted the Northeast on the last full day of winter Tuesday, closing schools and turning roads into a slick mess that got the Harlem Globetrotters' bus into a minor accident.

Some places were looking at well over a foot of snow by the end of a storm that commuters hoped would be the last. Unwelcome as it was, there's nothing unusual about a snowstorm in the Northeast this late in the season, when it can still get plenty cold enough.

"They don't happen all the time, but it's not, you know, unheard of," said Alan Dunham, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass.

Some schools in upstate New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut closed, adding a few more snow days to the calendar. Massachusetts officials postponed the English composition section of its standardized state test until Monday, to keep all schools on the same test date.

Late-winter snow also socked other parts of the northern U.S., which as much as 2 feet forecast in parts of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Icy roads caused some crashes Tuesday morning in Michigan.

In Marlborough, Mass., the Harlem Globetrotters' bus collided with a car on Interstate 290, but no one was hurt and the bus was able to drive away, the state police said. No citations were issued.

A storm earlier this month dumped more than a foot of snow on some parts of the region and caused coastal flooding in Massachusetts, The snow from that storm was nearly gone in some places before the new system started overnight, and the snow could continue into today.