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Friday, December 18, 2020
Nor’easter Live Updates: Messy Snowstorm Hits East Coast
At a critical moment in the pandemic, a major storm brought heavy snow, freezing rain and fierce winds from the Mid-Atlantic to New England.
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New York starts to dig out from its biggest snowfall in years.
Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times
DECEMBER 17, 2020
As a powerful nor’easter exited the New York region late Thursday morning and moved into New England, it left behind the biggest snowfall the city had gotten in several years.
The quick-moving storm pummeled much of the Northeast with snow, sleet and heavy winds on Wednesday and Thursday. Parts of upstate New York were hit particularly hard, getting more than three feet of snow. Officials from Virginia to Maine blamed the weather for hundreds of car crashes and at least six deaths.
Despite the heavy precipitation, the storm’s impact in the New York City area — the region’s first major snow of the season — was less devastating than it might have been given the well-established changes to school, work and nightlife routines forced by the pandemic.
With the storm moving on, people began to shovel sidewalks and driveways and to dig out cars buried in snow, as officials in the affected areas continued to advise against testing icy roads. The guidance was redundant for legions of commuters who have worked from home for months. Some schools continued classes, using online techniques they have relied on in for months.
“If there is any silver lining to this cloud that we’ve been living under, this is it,” said George Latimer, the Westchester County, N.Y., executive.
A winter storm warning was lifted at 1 p.m. for New York City and the surrounding suburbs in New York, New Jersey and Connecticu. The heaviest snowfall hit the city overnight. By 8 a.m., 10 inches had fallen in Central Park, the National Weather Service said.
“The amount of snow we saw in the last 24 hours was the most we’ve seen since January 2016,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
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Parts of Connecticut got a foot of snow, according to Weather Service reports, and just under a foot was recorded in the Bronx and in Jamaica, Queens.
To the north, some parts of Massachusetts got up to 10 inches, with more expected. Several cities in upstate New York were reporting record or near-record snowfalls.
“It is a serious condition,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said.”
In Binghamton, N.Y., meteorologists reported 41 inches of snow, with more than four inches an hour falling overnight. The executive of Broome County, which encompasses it, ordered a ban on travel Thursday morning that prohibited everyone except essential workers from the roads.
The storm’s effects were expected to linger. With temperatures hovering near freezing, the Weather Service warned that roads and sidewalks would most likely be treacherous and that travelers should take extra care.
The heavy winds and wet snow caused some power outages in parts of the New York City region. There were more than 9,100 power outages in New York State, Mr. Cuomo said Thursday morning. More than 3,700 customers were without electricity on Long Island, according to utility providers, with the bulk of the outages in eastern Suffolk County.
In New Jersey, there were 13,000 outages at the storm’s peak, officials said.
Da’Vel Johnson, a Weather Service meteorologist, said the cold temperatures that accompanied the storm were expected to persist, with windchill effects making the region feel particularly frigid.
“It will be pretty chilly for quite some time,” Mr. Johnson said. “Like, welcome people to winter.”
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ALBANY, N.Y. — The snowstorm that blanketed the Northeast delivered record or near-record snowfalls to parts of upstate New York, prompting Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday to declare a state of emergency in 18 counties outside New York City and its immediate suburbs.
The snow was particularly heavy in the state’s Southern Tier area, with the biggest city in the region, Binghamton, getting 41 inches, the National Weather Service said. At its heaviest, the snow was falling in Binghamton at a rate of more than four inches an hour, meteorologists said.
The city’s previous two-day snowfall record, set in March 2017, was 35.3 inches.
Officials in the city and in Broome County, where Binghamton is the seat, urged residents to stay off the roads to allow for plowing.
Early Thursday, the Broome County executive, Jason Garnar, said the county was using whatever four-wheeled vehicles were available to take hospital and nursing home workers to their jobs as the region continues to confront an increase in coronavirus cases over the last month.
In one instance, Broome County sheriff’s deputies used a Humvee to take a sick patient to the hospital after ambulances and snowmobiles were unable to reach a remote area. Parking lots at some hospitals and medical centers were also inaccessible, creating additional complications.
Some smaller towns and villages had not yet been able to get drivers into their snow plows.
The area’s major north-south highway, Interstate 81, was “basically a parking lot” on Thursday morning, Mr. Garnar said, after disabled vehicles snarled traffic. There were widespread reports of cars off the road elsewhere as well.
Richard C. David, Binghamton’s mayor, said that more than two dozen plows were working to clear the city’s streets on Thursday, but that several had broken down or gotten stuck in the snow.
“It’s historic levels here,” he said.
Most businesses were closed, and snow removal crews were planning to work through the night to try to dig out the city. There had been no reports of damage directly related to the snow, the mayor added.
Mr. David said residents of the region, a largely rural swath along Pennsylvania’s northern border, had been surprised by the storm’s intensity after initial forecasts that predicted from eight to 18 inches of snow.
Instead, the snowfall “was more than double” what was anticipated, he said, making it hard for plows to keep up.
The mayor said he woke up at 2:30 a.m. Thursday and was stunned to see what he described as whiteout conditions.
“I’d never seen it come down that fast, in that period of time,” he said.
“It was beautiful, actually,” he added.
The small rural town of Newark Valley, just northwest of Binghamton, appeared to have been hit even harder, getting around 44 inches of snow, according to Mr. Cuomo.
In Albany, the state capital, nearly 23 inches had fallen at the airport by Thursday afternoon. The city’s mayor, Kathy Sheehan, declared a state of emergency, closing civic buildings.
Slick roads resulted in several deadly car crashes, airlines canceled hundreds of flights and some rail and subway service was delayed on Thursday as the winter storm created hazardous conditions across the East Coast.
Three people were killed on roads in Pennsylvania and a 19-year-old man died in a collision in Virginia, officials said. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on Thursday that there had been more than 600 crashes in the state during the storm and that two people had died.
One multicar collision in New York City left a half-dozen people hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, officials said late Wednesday night. New York City officials said early Thursday that no other major problems had been reported on the streets.
George Latimer, the Westchester County, N.Y., executive, said there had been dozens of highway spinouts overnight, with police officers racing to rescue drivers in the surburban area just north of New York City.
In New Jersey, state troopers had responded to more than 200 snow-related crashes as of 8 a.m. Thursday, officials said.
Even in areas where the worst of the storm had passed as of Thursday, officials pleaded with people not to drive, with more freezing cold weather forecast and crews working to plow and clear highways and streets.
“If you do not have to be on the roads, please don’t travel today,” Mr. Cuomo said.
Mass transit systems were running smoothly for the most part.
Transit officials in New York said that a weather-related subway signal problem was causing lengthy delays on the D line, but that trains were otherwise running on a normal weekday schedule. Some buses, their tires outfitted with chains, were driving at reduced speeds and therefore delayed.
The Long Island Rail Road was operating with reduced service Thursday morning. The Metro-North Railroad, which serves communities north of New York City, reported only scattered delays. One northbound Metro-North train hit a downed tree Thursday morning, officials said. No one was injured.
New Jersey Transit rail and bus service, which was suspended throughout central and northern New Jersey, was to resume around midday, officials said.
Dangerously strong winds prompted a ban on certain vehicles, including empty tractor-trailers. The restriction was expected to lift at 4 p.m. Thursday, or earlier if conditions warranted.
Flights across the country were delayed or canceled. More than 200 flights were scrapped on Thursday at the three major airports that serve New York City, but airlines said they expected to return to normal service later in the day.
A Spirit Airlines flight that landed at Baltimore-Washington International Airport on Thursday morning skidded onto the grass while making a turn on a taxiway. The 111 people on board were not injured, the airline said.
The nor’easter that began by walloping the Mid-Atlantic states, creating hazardous driving conditions and producing at least a foot of snow across parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, was blanketing much of New England on Thursday.
Most of southern New England experienced moderate to heavy snowfall overnight, and some areas were expected to see two to three inches an hour on Thursday. The snow was expected to continue through the day before tapering off in the evening, with the final flakes likely to fall across Cape Cod and eastern Maine, according to the National Weather Service.
In Springfield, Mass., where about a foot of snow had fallen by Thursday morning, Mauro Daniele said he had not seen any other cars on the road for a mile, in either direction, as he drove to his family’s bakery, La Fiorentina Pastry Shop.
“It’s the type of storm where people are hunkered down inside,” Mr. Daniele said as he prepared gingerbread-house kits for a local contest. “We’re New Englanders, we’ve been through worse. But given what’s already been going on with small businesses and the economy, a foot of snow is the last thing we needed.”
Still, a small crowd of regular customers had come to have their morning coffee and read the paper, he said.
“They’re here no matter the weather,” he said.
In Connecticut, the streets of downtown New Haven were quiet, aside from the rumble of plows and the scraping of shovels. Ziona Greenberg and her husband, Norman, were among the few people outside Thursday morning.
Ms. Greenberg said she had been working from home during the pandemic and had not left her apartment in days. The snowfall, she said, motivated the couple go outside.
“I woke him up and ran to the window,” she said.
Utility companies reported more than 1,000 Connecticut customers without power on Thursday afternoon.
Although much of the Northeast had not yet experienced a major storm this season, New England was hit with its first nor’easter in early December. Some areas got more than a foot of snow.
Other parts of Massachusetts got up to 15.5 inches of snow from the latest storm; Boston got nearly 10 inches, with more expected during the day. Colder air also moved into the Boston area, where temperatures were below freezing.
By Thursday morning, the small town of Danbury in central New Hampshire had been buried in what was believed to be most snowfall in New England, 32 inches and counting.
The town has about 1,200 residents and three snow plows, which have been working nonstop to keep up, said Kelsie Dodge, who works in the deli section at the Danbury Country Store.
“It’s the most snow that I personally have seen in my life here in one nightfall, really,” said Ms. Dodge, who described seeing several vehicles struggle to get up a small hill outside the store.
“They’re just kind of spinning in the snow,” she said.
Meteorologists in Vermont said that a band of heavy snow moved across Rutland and Windsor Counties overnight, creating poor visibility, and heavy snowfall continued Thursday morning, making travel hazardous.
In New Hampshire and Maine, meteorologists predicted that snow would continue to fall through Thursday afternoon. The National Weather Service in Portland, Maine, said the southern parts of the two states could receive 12 to 18 inches of snow, with lesser accumulations toward the north.
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