U.S. Northeast cities, businesses and
residents began digging out after the winter season’s first major
storm dumped as much as 2 feet of snow amid swirling winds.
Freezing temperatures will linger this week, forecasters said.
The storm headed out to sea slowly last night, and another
weather system may bring more snow to the area in two or three
days, National Weather Service meteorologist Walter Drag said.
Hurricane-force winds hit Cape Cod and Nantucket Island,
Massachusetts, Sunday afternoon.
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“We’re going to be at or below freezing until Saturday,”
Drag said in an interview from Taunton, Mass. The
weekend blizzard, with sustained winds of at least 35 mph amid
snow and both low visibility and wind chill, probably was one of
the five worst in New England in the past century, he said.
About 15 inches of snow fell in New York City, weather
service meteorologist Mike Willie said. Crews worked through Sunday night clearing and salting roadways to enable commuters to make it to work Monday morning, said Keith Mellis, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Sanitation in Manhattan.
More than 2,300 of the department’s workers were piloting
plows and salt trucks on the city’s streets, Mellis said. In
addition, the city hired 357 workers to clear crosswalks and dig
out fire hydrants and bus stops.
New York is also employing snow-melting machines to get rid
of the white stuff. The machines, which are serviced by a
mechanic on site and loaded by sanitation workers, are capable of
melting 60 tons of snow an hour, he said.
In Boston, snow tapered off, and the wind speed was 26 miles
an hour at Boston’s Logan Airport at 6 p.m. Sunday, according to the
National Weather Service. Gusts were as strong as 40 miles an hour
Sunday night. About 30,000 people on Cape Cod and
6,000 on Nantucket had lost power, Massachusetts Emergency
Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge said in an interview.
As much as 31 inches (78 centimeters) of snow fell on
Cape Cod, though “it’s hard to measure with winds blowing 60 to
70 mph,” Drag said.
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney declared snow emergencies Saturday. The emergency places restrictions on parking, and asks residents to dig out fire hydrants and not shovel snow back on to plowed streets.
Logan International Airport in Boston and T.F. Green Airport in Warwick were closed Sunday.
The storm is “certainly up there in the pantheon of Boston
blizzards,” Seth Gitell, a spokesman for Menino, said in an
interview. “The mayor is asking people to stay inside while city
work crews clear streets.”
More than 630 plows and snow removal vehicles were working to
clear streets, and schools have canceled classes for Monday and
Tuesday, Gitell said.
The weekend storm compares with the blizzard of 1978, Drag
said. During that storm, 3 feet of snow fell in the Northeast
with hurricane-force winds, 99 people died and Massachusetts had
$500 million in property damage, the weather service said on its
Web site.
Bloomberg News
