Winter Arrives Early, Blanketing East Coast/Records Fall as Snow Blankets East Coast

Winter Arrives Early, Blanketing East Coast
By LIZ ROBBINS
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: December 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/us/20snow.html?hpw


An enormous winter storm piled snow on New York and New England Saturday evening, after crippling the nation’s capital and the mid-Atlantic earlier in the day, causing thousands of flights to be canceled across the country, knocking out power lines and stranding motorists during the peak of the holiday shopping and travel season.

With winter officially starting on Monday, one to two feet of snow were expected to fall by Sunday morning from Virginia to New England, where blizzard warnings were posted for coastal areas.

“This is one of the bigger ones,” said Kevin Witt, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in the Baltimore-Washington forecast office in Sterling, Va.

Mr. Witt said that when the gusty snow ended late Saturday night into Sunday morning it could rank among the top 10 winter snowstorms.

By 10 p.m. Saturday, the National Weather Service reported that nearly 9 inches of snow had fallen in Breezy Point, Queens, and 3.7 inches at LaGuardia Airport. But even before the heaviest snow arrived in New York, more than 500 flights from the three area airports were canceled, and a winter storm warning was in effect until 11 a.m. Sunday.

Snow has been measured in Central Park since 1869, and only two storms have produced more than two feet of snow, the most recent in February 2006. This storm was not likely to exceed a foot and a half in Central Park, but some parts of central Long Island could see up to two feet, said Jeffrey Tongue, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service based in Upton, N.Y.

Overnight winds were expected to whip up to 40 to 45 miles an hour on Long Island, he said, creating whiteout conditions.

In Washington, a city not accustomed to snow this early and this much, the storm blanketed the capital in serenity. At least it seemed picturesque until it began falling at a rate of two inches per hour on the major city streets and the surrounding Beltway early Saturday afternoon, snarling traffic and forcing mass transit shutdowns of buses and many trains.

The mayor of Washington, Adrian M. Fenty, declared a snow emergency, following the state of emergency that Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia declared on Friday in advance of the storm. At least one driver died because of the snow in Virginia, a 68-year-old woman whose car ran off a state road near the North Carolina border, said Laura Southard, of the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. A woman was also killed when her car drove off a snowy state road in Defiance, Ohio, according to the state highway patrol. By Saturday afternoon, Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, Gov. Steve Beshear of Kentucky, Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia had also declared emergencies.

Greyhound canceled service on 294 routes through Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., and discontinued service in and out of New York City around 8 p.m., said Maureen Richmond, a spokeswoman.

Officials in Washington said the storm was likely to produce the area’s heaviest snow since February 2003, when about 16 inches fell. Metrorail trains stopped serving all of the city’s above-ground stations at 1 p.m. on Saturday because heavy snow was already covering the electrified third rail that powers the trains. All of the city’s buses also stopped running around the same time, according to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

Traffic ground to a halt on the Beltway that encircles the city, as at least 10 tractor trailers were unable to climb a steep snow-covered hill near Marlow Heights and stalled, according to the Maryland State Highway Administration. Cars and trucks idled for an hour before plows cleared the highway.

In Virginia, hundreds of accidents, including several major ones involving tractor trailers, shut down parts of Interstate 81, said Jeff Caldwell, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Transportation. Near Lexington, Va., about 200 miles southwest of Washington, motorists were stranded in a seven-mile backup for most of the day and early evening.

“Local law enforcement officials along with the National Guard are out there, and they’re trying to reach those motorists and bring them food and water and gas, ” Mr. Caldwell said. “We are urging people to stay with their vehicles.”

Hundreds of thousands of people lost power as the storm swept eastward on Friday and Saturday, including 135,000 customers in West Virginia served by Appalachian Power, a division of American Electric Power. That company also reported 19,456 outages in Tennessee on Saturday afternoon, and its Kentucky division reported 69,400 in that state. Ms. Southard, of Virginia’s Department of Emergency Management, said at least 71,000 were without power on Saturday afternoon. In parts of western North Carolina, where the storm struck Friday evening, more than 60,000 customers were without power on Saturday.

It was still unclear how the storm would affect retail sales on the final frenzied shopping weekend before Christmas, but the snow had already forced the nation’s major airlines to issue travel waivers and redirect a large number of passengers.

The runways at all three Washington area airports were shut down by Saturday evening: Ronald Reagan National Airport closed before noon. Baltimore-Washington International Airport closed its runways at 1:40 p.m. on Saturday, said a spokesman, Jonathan Dean. And Dulles International Airport closed by early evening, said Tara Hamilton, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

“The snow is accumulating too quickly on the taxiways, and we need to close to aircraft operations so we can clear snow from the airfield to be open tomorrow morning for the airlines,” Ms. Hamilton wrote in an e-mail message.

Sarah Wheaton, Raymond Hernandez and Ian Urbina contributed reporting.






Records Fall as Snow Blankets East Coast
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: December 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/us/21snow.html?th&emc=th


It came up the coast on the last weekend of autumn, a ghostly apparition of midwinter, roaring into the solitude of cities and countrysides from the Carolinas to Cape Cod with blizzardlike ferocity. It closed airports, roads and malls and recreated Whittier’s snowbound American landscape for 60 million people.

By the time the two-day blow churned to oblivion in the Atlantic on Sunday, a dozen states had been buried. It was not the storm of the century, but two feet of snow lay across Eastern Long Island and parts of Virginia, West Virginia and New Jersey, and nearly that much in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Rhode Island.

Records fell in Washington (16.4 inches), Baltimore (20.5 inches) and Upton, N.Y., the Suffolk County site of a National Weather Service center (26.3 inches). The heaviest snowfall was in Wintergreen, Va., which had 30 inches. One death was reported, a 68-year-old woman in a Virginia traffic accident.

There were odd tales of two trains and a jitney bus gone awry. Helena E. Williams, the president of the Long Island Rail Road, reported that about 50 riders were stranded, shuttled and towed aboard four trains in a seven-hour ordeal that began at Pennsylvania Station at 1:17 a.m. and ended at Ronkonkoma at 8:45 a.m. In between there were snowdrifts, ice, an engine breakdown and no heat on a three-hour stretch going backward from Wyandanch to Farmingdale.

And in New Jersey, passengers aboard a train and a bus, both operated by NJ Transit, had a close call at Pennsauken on Saturday night. Officials said a bus with 26 passengers stalled on snow-covered railroad tracks as the train with 38 passengers approached. The bus riders were evacuated moments before the vehicle was struck by the train.

“There was a terrific impact noise,” said Ralph Mintel, a passenger on the train, “and the rail car rocked violently from side to side. I feared that we had derailed, and that the car was going to tip over.” He was relieved to learn that no one was killed and only two people aboard the train were injured.

A Hampton jitney left New York City at 9:30 p.m. Saturday with fewer than a dozen passengers and got to Southampton at 6:30 a.m. Sunday, a nine-hour adventure in the storm.

On Sunday, airports reopened and flights resumed, although thousands of travelers remained stranded in a backup of schedules that was expected to last for days. Plows cleared most of the major highways and many streets, children and adults frolicked in enchanted parks, and life struggled toward normalcy as residents began to dig out of what, for many, was the biggest snowstorm in years. Federal offices in Washington were to remain closed on Monday.

As the sun came out, residents emerged with shovels, sleds and cameras. States of emergency were lifted in many places. Malls and businesses reopened, and most buses and railroads resumed near-normal schedules, although Long Island Rail Road service was limited, with hourly trains on most branches.

New York City was spared the brunt of the storm, recording 10.9 inches in Central Park, 14.2 at John F. Kennedy International Airport and 8.8 at La Guardia Airport. There were many flight cancellations, but an upbeat Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg encouraged residents and visitors to turn inconvenience into an opportunity to see a Broadway show, go to a museum or do some Christmas shopping.

The mayor said that thousands of sanitation workers plowing around the clock had cleared all major arteries, and predicted that all the streets would be plowed overnight. But with many cars still buried in curbside drifts, alternate-side parking rules were suspended for Monday. Mr. Bloomberg also said schools would be open on Monday.

As the storm roared up the coast, it slammed hard into eastern Long Island, dropping at least two feet of snow in several communities, including Bridgehampton, East Setauket and Patchogue. Whiteout conditions prompted declarations of emergency in Riverhead, Southampton and other communities, and drivers were directed to stay off the roads.

Many Long Islanders reached back decades for the last comparable snowfall. “The only ones I can relate to this were the storms of ’77 and ’78,” said Bob Wesolowski, the owner of RBR/Melville Snow Contractors.

“We just got hammered,” John Searing, deputy commissioner of the Suffolk County Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services. He said he passed 15 abandoned vehicles on his way to work, while dozens more slowed clearing efforts on the Long Island Expressway and other highways.

Drifts up to seven feet on the runways forced the closing of MacArthur Airport in Islip — for the first time since it was built in 1949 — from 9 p.m. Saturday to 11 a.m. Sunday. Even after it reopened, most flights were canceled.

The Suffolk County police reported that a private snow plow driver was found dead in Coram; it was unclear if his death was storm-related. The plow was in park and running when he was found at 8 a.m., and officials said they could not rule out an accident or exposure.

Rooftops along Ninth Avenue as light traffic headed downtown. More Photos >

Drivers across the region were urged to stay off treacherous roads. Scores of accidents were reported, but no serious injuries. There were isolated power failures in New Jersey, but nearly all were expected to be resolved overnight. Gov. Jon S. Corzine praised the work of cleanup crews and utility workers, and said there had been no storm-related fatalities in the state.

The storm, which walloped the Mid-Atlantic states and the nation’s capital on Saturday and moved across the metropolitan area and the Northeast on Sunday, shut down many airports in the region. While the major New York area ones — Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International — remained open, it was just a technicality; blizzard-like conditions forced airlines to cancel 750 flights.

Stranded passengers clogged the Delta terminal at La Guardia on Sunday. Among them were six friends from Lafayette, La., whose first-time vacation in New York was ending sourly.

They had arrived last Wednesday and were due to fly home at 8:30 p.m. But their flight was canceled and Delta told them there were no seats available until the afternoon of Dec. 25.

“We can’t go home until Christmas night,” said Lindsay Kirkpatrick, 24, a teacher’s aide. “We don’t have anywhere to stay tonight. We have no food vouchers, nothing.”

It was not all misery. Outside the Brooklyn Public Library, on their way to Prospect Park with a sled, Angie Lee and her husband, Alex Lencicki, each held a hand of their son, Dashiell, 2, and lofted him over a pile of slush. Bundled in a brown snowsuit with blue mittens, he squealed.

“He’s happy even if we don’t make it to the park,” Ms. Lee said. “It’s like playing with the wrapping instead of the present.”

Nearby, Abe Lusk, 12, crammed handfuls of snow into his mouth. “Snow hasn’t tasted this good in a long time,” he observed.

Around New York, city parks were dreamscapes of snow meadows and dark woodlands in silhouette. It was the last day of autumn, and thousands of children and adults muffled to the eyes were out enjoying the prewinter spectacle, gliding down hills on sleds, snowboards and skis. Parks Department personnel handed out plastic sleds and poured free cups of hot cocoa in all the boroughs.

“Nature has smiled upon us,” said Deborah Krohn, 48, of the Upper West Side. “It has been the perfect storm.”





Reporting was contributed by Angela Macropoulos, Colin Moynihan, A. G. Sulzberger and Karen Zraick.