Residents and emergency workers in the Northeast struggled to dig out Sunday after a gigantic midwinter storm left much of the region buried under drifting snow and reeling from gale-force wind.
As temperatures dipped into the teens across the region, utility crews worked to restore power to the more than 650,000 customers who were blacked out by the storm.
By Sunday morning, more than 300,000 customers remained without power, mostly in southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod, Rhode Island and the shore line of eastern Connecticut. NStar, which serves Massachusetts, said that many regions were still too dangerous to send in crews.
Road crews also labored into the night to remove snow from streets and sidewalks, piling it in whatever open space they could find. In Connecticut, crews were using a front-end loader late Saturday night to remove snow from I-95 near Fairfield.
The storm, spawned by the collision of two weather systems, touched more than 40 million people, though early reports suggested it accounted for only a handful of deaths. One awful case involved a young boy shoveling snow with his father in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston who died of carbon monoxide poisoning after he retreated inside a car to warm up. The exhaust pipe was blocked by snow.
More than three feet of snow fell on parts of Connecticut, and more than two feet accumulated on Long Island and in Massachusetts, causing coastal flooding that forced evacuations of some Massachusetts communities. The Weather Service said it had reports out of New Haven County of 36.2 inches in Oxford and 38 inches in Milford. In Commack, on Long Island, 29.1 inches of snow and 27.5 inches at MacArthur Airport in Islip. In Boston, the official accumulation was 24.9 inches, the fifth highest in city history.
Some streets in Connecticut resembled ski slopes or mountain passes, and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy asked the federal government on Saturday for help.
“As we continue with the recovery from this historic winter storm, I am asking the federal government to provide us assistance with this process,” Governor Malloy said.
Airlines were also trying to return to normal Sunday, after canceling more than 5,000 flights since Friday; the fallout could reverberate for days. Logan International Airport in Boston and the three major airports around New York City have all resumed operations.
For many areas, “this storm will rank in the top five of recorded snowstorms,” said David Stark, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in eastern Suffolk County on Long Island. Outside his office, measurements have been taken since 1949, and this storm beat them all with 30.9 inches.
“The way this evolved was a very classic winter nor’easter,” Mr. Stark said. “The way it formed and moved is well understood, and it is the type of situation we have seen in the past — but this storm brought more moisture and therefore more snow.”
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg expressed relief Saturday that the city had avoided worse damage and offered to assist the more heavily pounded neighboring states and Long Island, the hardest-hit part of New York State. Most roads in the city, he said, were well on the way to being cleared, and he thanked people for staying off the streets during the storm. The accumulation in Central Park was measured at 11.4 inches by the time the snow relented at daybreak Saturday.
“I think it is fair to say we were very lucky,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
The National Weather Service received reports of flooding up and down the Massachusetts coast, especially in areas just north and south of Boston. Water carrying slabs of ice sloshed through the streets and lapped against houses. The National Guard was dispatched to assist in evacuations.
Waves off the South Shore of Boston and parts of Cape Cod measured as high as 20 feet. Two feet of water was observed in Winthrop, Mass., just north of Boston. Waters breached a sea wall in the Humarock section of Scituate, while roads in Gloucester, Marblehead and Revere were reported flooded or impassable.
At a news conference, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said New York would send crews to Connecticut and Massachusetts to help remove snow and restore power.
After the Big Snowfall, the Struggle to Dig Out
This article
After the Big Snowfall, the Struggle to Dig Out
can be opened in url
http://drummernewster.blogspot.com/2013/02/after-big-snowfall-struggle-to-dig-out.html
After the Big Snowfall, the Struggle to Dig Out
