Snow socks North again

2,800 flights scratched; 1 million lose power

U.S. Parks Service worker Danny Merced clears snow from the steps of Federal Hall in New York on Wednesday.
U.S. Parks Service worker Danny Merced clears snow from the steps of Federal Hall in New York on Wednesday.

The second winter storm of the week swept into the U.S. Northeast with snow and ice, grounding more than 2,000 planes, closing schools and cutting power to more than 1 million customers.

photo

AP

Peggy Udden labors to clear her driveway in Norwood, Mass.

Boston received 9.7 inches of snow by 1 p.m., the National Weather Service said. Four inches of snow fell in Manhattan’s Central Park, with a quarter-inch of ice on top of that, before the storm wound down, said David Stark, an agency meteorologist in Upton, N.Y. More than a foot was reported in New York City’s northern suburbs.

More than 2,800 flights into, out of or around the U.S. were canceled by early evening, said FlightAware, a Houston-based airline tracking service. The hardest-hit major carrier was JetBlue Airways Corp., which scrubbed a quarter of its flights, spokesman Real Hamilton-Romeo said.

Almost 800,000 homes and businesses from Ohio to New York, most of them in Philadelphia’s suburbs, remained without power Wednesday afternoon, according to company websites. Exelon Corp.’s Peco utility, based in Philadelphia, reported more than 625,000 customers without power at midday.

“We’re seeing extensive damage,” Peco spokesman Greg Smore said. “We had a very heavy, wet, dense snow already on the trees. The weather that came in this morning was a mixture of sleet and freezing rain and that kind of encapsulated those trees that were already weighed down.”

Seven inches of snow and ice fell in the Philadelphia area from 7 p.m. Monday to 9 a.m. Wednesday, the U.S.Weather Prediction Center said.

A damage assessment hadn’t been done because tree limbs were still felling power lines Wednesday afternoon, Smore said. Some customers probably were expected to be without power into the weekend, he said.

The New York City Emergency Management Office posted a hazardous-travel advisory because of the ice, and a state of emergency was declared in New Jersey and New York.

By noon, New Jersey Transit resumed service on the Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast Line, suspended because of icy overhead wires, and New York reopened Interstate 84 between Pennsylvania and Connecticut, which had been closed to all traffic, later in the afternoon.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news briefing that the city was facing a blood shortage.

“A lot of blood donations that normally come in have not happened,” he said. “We have a very serious situation on our hands where we need blood donations, and we need them quickly.”

The mayor said he would donate blood later Wednesday.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said parts of New York City and Long Island also faced a shortage of salt. He said the state would distribute salt to areas “that have truly a dire situation.”

“The bad news is, there’s snow and ice,” Cuomo said at a news conference. “The good news is, we have been dealing with so many storms with such frequency that we’ve developed quite the expertise with storm management.”

Last winter, the city’s Department of Sanitation said it used 346,112 tons of road salt.The department began this winter with roughly 250,000 tons, officials said last week. Even before the latest storm, that stockpile had been nearly depleted, forcing the department to add to its supply in recent weeks. Some of that salt, city officials said, was provided by the state.

On Monday, de Blasio said the city had 175,000 tons of salt on hand.

“We have the resources for this storm,” he said Wednesday. “We have the resources for the next storm as it is projected.”

Schools were closed in most areas, but not in New York City, where de Blasio - to the chagrin of many pupils - has insisted on schools remaining open throughout this unusually snowy winter.

Without mentioning names, he said some cities “get paralyzed when they get 2 inches of snow.”

“We just keep going,” he said. “We’re tough enough to handle it.”

On Staten Island, people endured long waits behind the wheel and at bus stops as the slippery conditions made for slow travel.

Joshua Laird said he waited 15 minutes for a bus to the ferry terminal from his house in Fort Wadsworth, as compared to the usual minute or two.

“It’s a mess, but I think we’ve been lulled by a few warm winters to not expect this kind of weather,” he said. “You just have to remember it will be over soon.”

George Constantine, 60, who hands out newspapers in front of a subway station entrance, has become familiar this winter with all the various forms of misery that can be etched on a commuter’s face.

He likes to shout encouragement to those coming out of the station.

“There is ice outside,” he shouted to the moving crowd. “Do not rush. You will all make it to work. You will not be compensated if you fall.”

Constantine was trying to give people a reason to smile, but with limited success.

“People are tired,” he said. “It’s been a long winter.”

Theodore St. Louis, 43, from Staten Island, could not agree more. His morning drive was more of a crawl, and he had had enough.

“I’m moving to Florida in June,” he said. “I’m dead serious.”

In upstate New York and areas farther north, including Boston, snow was falling at a rate of 1 to 2 inches per hour Wednesday. Some areas were expecting more than 10 inches before the storm ended.

Boston public schools closed for the day, according to the district website, along with Northeastern University, Boston University and Boston College.

Sleet and freezing rain were reported across Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, while rain fell on Cape Cod and the state’s offshore islands, said Alan Dunham, a weather service meteorologist in Taunton, Mass. The snow was expected to wind down over eastern and central Massachusetts before dark.

After that, the Northeast was forecast to get a three day respite before the next system delivers a chance of more snow for the weekend, said Bernie Rayno, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc.

Weather patterns this winter have delivered repeated rounds of polar cold to the U.S. from Canada, bitter weather that has mainly struck the Midwest and has been felt all the way to the Gulf Coast, said Todd Crawford, a principal scientist at Weather Services International in Andover, Mass.

The cold gets its start in the Pacific, Crawford said. A deep area of thunderstorm activity over Indonesia has generated heat in the basin, accelerating the jet stream, which is made of ribbons of very strong winds that move weather systems around the globe.

That river of air has run into a ridge of high pressure over Alaska, sending it northward before it drops across the continental U.S., Crawford said. As it moves south through Canada, it picks up polar air that has sent temperatures lower throughout the U.S. several times since January.

“It has stayed cold,” he said. “It’s a stable pattern and that’s a little strange, especially in winter.”

The eastern U.S. has a 50 percent to 80 percent chance for below-normal temperatures through Feb. 14, according to the U.S. Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

The cold has boosted energy demand. Natural-gas prices have surged 25 percent so far this year. About 49 percent of U.S. households use gas for heating, Energy Information Administration data show.

Information for this article was contributed by Brian K. Sullivan, Lynn Doan, Christine Buurma, Jim Polson, Natasha Doff, Freeman Klopott and Mary Schlangenstein of Bloomberg News; by Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times; and by Marc Santora of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/06/2014

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