Wintry storm blasts New England
Some areas get 20 inches Sunday and expect more on Tuesday.
Blade news services
Sun, 01 Dec 2019 19:18:15 GMT
NEW YORK — The wintry storm that blanketed much of the Northeast with snow Monday, disrupting travel and closing schools, is expected to keep hammering parts of New England on Tuesday.
As the storm system moves slowly northeastward, some areas could get an additional foot of snow overnight and into the morning, forecasters said. Winter storm warnings and advisories were posted for most of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine.
“It’s going to get cranking tonight and tomorrow morning,” said Frank Nocera, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norton, Mass. Metropolitan Boston, which already had 4 to 8 inches of snow in some suburbs, could see those amounts double by Tuesday, he said, and more school closings and commuting problems were possible.
The storm delivered the first major snowfall of the season in the Northeast, but other than coming at a relatively early date, it did not pack many surprises for weather experts.
“I would call it a pretty typical snowstorm,” said Matt Doody, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “In the Northeast, we get these storms during this time of year, especially between now and February — even into as late as March.”
As the storm blasted its way into the region from Sunday into Monday, the hardest-hit areas were mainly in central New York; the region around Albany, the state capital; and western Massachusetts. More than a foot of snow fell in many areas, and Saratoga County northeast of Albany recorded up to 20 inches. Albany got 13.3 inches of snow Sunday, a record for Dec. 1 and one of the top 10 December snowfalls on record in the city. An added 5 to 10 inches is expected before Tuesday morning.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York declared a state of emergency for Albany, Saratoga, and several other counties in the region, and said he would deploy 300 members of the National Guard to help with snow removal.
“We’re tough, we’ve seen it all, we can handle it all,” Mr. Cuomo said at a briefing before urging people to stay off the roads. He told nonessential state employees to stay home.
More than 770 flights within, into, or out of the United States were canceled Monday, according to FlightAware.com, with many of the scrubbed flights involving the New York and Boston airports.
It’s a region that’s used to snow — but still, this is a lot.
Classes were canceled Monday at the University at Albany, something Allison Craig, who has taught at the school for 20 years, said she could not recall happening before.
Stuck at her home in the Albany suburb of Delmar, she watched the snow mounting and her neighbors working to dig their cars out.
“The plow operator where I live has been plowing since last night, without stopping,” Ms. Craig said. “He didn’t want to take a break and let it pile up, so he’s been without sleep since yesterday.”
In Nashua, N.H., Alana Kirkpatrick didn’t enjoy her 5 a.m. “workout,” which consisted of removing heaps of snow from her car.
The storm was blamed for multiple deaths over the long holiday weekend.
In Missouri, officials said three people were killed Saturday when their vehicles were swept off flooded roads, the Associated Press reported, and a 48-year-old Louisiana man died in a separate incident.
A highway pileup near Kingston, Ont., involving about 30 vehicles, including several tractor-trailers, left one person dead and several injured, according to officials. Curtis Dick, a constable with the Ontario Provincial Police, said that the crash was related to the storm.
The authorities in Arizona found the bodies of two young children who had been among nine people riding in a vehicle Friday that was swept away as it tried to cross a creek swollen with storm runoff.
A third child was still missing.
Investigators are looking into whether blizzard conditions in South Dakota caused the crash of a private plane shortly after it took off bound for Idaho on Saturday.
The 12 people on board belonged to the same family; nine were killed.
People clear snow in a shopping center after an overnight snowfall Monday in Marlborough, Mass. Some parts of New England had record snow falls for Sunday and are expecting even more Tuesday.
Pedestrians walk through snow and wind Monday in lower Manhattan, N.Y. Classes were canceled at local schools as the city braced for even more snow to come Tuesday. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has declared a state of emergency for several counties.