Saturday, February 27, 2010
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A slow-moving winter storm smacked the Northeast on Friday, unleashing heavy snow, rain and hurricane-force winds as it knocked out power to more than a million homes and businesses.
It turned Maine beachfront streets into rivers and piled on the misery in places hit by three major blizzards in less than a month.
Every form of travel was miserable if not impossible. More than 1,000 flights were canceled, bus service across northern New Jersey was knocked out and roads from Ohio to West Virginia to Maine were closed. State troopers used snowmobiles to reach motorists stranded for hours on an eastern New York highway.
Power failures were so severe and widespread in New Hampshire — 340,000 of the state’s roughly 800,000 customers — that even the state Emergency Operations Center was operating on a generator. Gov. John Lynch said it could take a week for all those lights to flicker back on.
It was wind and rain rather than snow that wreaked havoc in that famously frigid state and its neighbor Maine. Parts of southern Maine were hit with more than 8 inches of rain.
Areas to the south, meanwhile, got their third heavy dumping of snow this month. Monroe, N.Y., received 31 inches, and New York City got more than 20.
A man was killed by a falling snow-laden tree branch in Central Park in New York City, one of at least three deaths being blamed on the storm.
Much of the region, particularly Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, only recently finished cleaning up from a pair of storms a few weeks ago.
Friday’s storm made February the snowiest month ever for New Brunswick, N.J.; it has gotten 37 inches so far. This had already been the snowiest winter for Philadelphia and Atlantic City, N.J., before the latest storm dropped another 4 to 5 inches by midmorning Friday.
Blowing, drifting snow blinded and stranded drivers in mountainous parts of West Virginia, shutting down countless roads, and National Guard troops were mobilized to help. It was bad enough that mail service was suspended in six counties.
“The drifts are 15 feet deep over the roads, and highways can’t move fast enough to keep them open,” said Marvin Hill, emergency manager for Randolph County.
Even skiers in the area got bad news. Snowshoe Mountain Resort had boasted the best conditions in its 36-year history this week, but a jackknifed tractor-trailer blocked the only road in Friday.
The highest wind reported was 91 mph off Portsmouth, N.H. — well above hurricane force of 74 mph. Gusts also hit 60 mph or more from the mountains of West Virginia to New York’s Long Island and Massachusetts.
In Epping, N.H., howling winds crashed a tree onto Joe and Laurie Mantini’s rural home late Thursday night; another tree crushed their parked recreational trailer. On Friday, a tarp covered the right side of their home as a contractor and an insurance adjuster were at work.
“Luckily nobody was hurt,” said Laurie Mantini, 38. “I don’t know what we’re going to do tonight.”
In the coastal town of Hampton, N.H., the unoccupied Surf Hotel caught fire, and the howling winds quickly spread the blaze to the rest of the block. Five wood-frame buildings, including an arcade and a restaurant, burned. The cause was unknown.
In Maine, waves crashing ashore at high tide Friday morning flooded streets in Saco, where storms have claimed several homes over the years.
Thousands of schools were closed, including in New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg acquiesced after vowing to keep them open.
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