After nearly two years without significant snowfall, a couple of major snowstorms have made the Northeast look a lot more like winter.
By early Monday, more than a foot of snow had fallen across upstate New York, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, resulting in delays, closings, cancellations, fender-benders and snow emergencies.
Schools throughout New York and New England delayed or canceled classes. Snow emergencies have been declared in several municipalities, including Albany, where one becomes effective at 8 p.m. Mayor Kathy Sheehan: "Typically we declare a snow emergency when we have 8 inches or more and this storm was just under that, but because it was piled on top of the previous storm we know that we have areas of the city where we need to get the snow cleared out and go in with our front-loaders and clear that snow out, push snow back. So, starting at 8 o'clock tonight people will be parking on the even side of the street."
Sheehan says once the primary focus of getting city streets clear for travelers is achieved, crews will tackle snowbanks impeding pedestrian traffic, remove snow from cut-outs in city streets that have islands, and clear other obstacles presented by the storm. "The way that the storm played out yesterday, it really didn't provide us with an opportunity to do anything other than plow. It was really falling at that sort of one inch per hour rate for a good part of the day, and then we had a little bit of a lull and then it started up again, so that kept our crews busy. What we do now is go back and ensure that we are plowing the rights-of-way, taking down those snowbanks."
Winter storm warnings have been rescinded across Massachusetts, but some bands of snow may linger. East of Worcester County high wind warnings are up until 7 p.m. with coastal areas such as Cape Cod and Nantucket expecting gusts as high as 65 mph. Governor Charlie Baker pushed back the start of the workday for state workers to 11 a.m.
National Weather Service meteorologist Kimberly McMahon says residents of the Bay State can expect lingering snow but not much more in the way of accumulations. "...it looks like Massachusetts will have a nice break in precipitation all day Tuesday and not expect any precipitation until possibly Wednesday. There may be some windy conditions that arrive with that system on Wednesday for Massachusetts, and especially the cape."
McMahon says stormy conditions will rule for the rest of the day farther up the coast. Roger Hill, weather forecaster for Vermont-based Weathering Heights, says Maine is in line for heavy snow, gusty winds and there's a blizzard warning in effect. "Maine's getting blizzard conditions right now because we have a very strong system that's undergoing what we call bombogenesis. This means that the area of low pressure is deepening so rapidly, it's about a millibar an hour, and it qualifies as what we call bombogenesis when you have basically, over the course of 24 hours you have 24 millibars deepening."
The National Weather Service's winter storm warning for much of upstate New York to Maine extends into Monday evening for some areas. "Big burst of west to north westerly winds currently right now across a good section of Pennsylvania into northern New Jersey, New York City, I see wind gusts as high as 70 miles per hour. Also, coastal Connecticut - they're seeing some really strong winds with some trees being reported down and some power outages due to the winds. A lot of blowing and drifting as well, that's the other issue, a travel problem, it's causing some outages. In the Albany-Schenectady area, the winds are going to be pretty brisk and pretty strong, but probably not enough to cause outages, but areas like Massachusetts, certainly Connecticut, Rhode Island, back into downeast Maine, they're going to feel the bulk of the wind, and they're still getting some pretty impressive snowfall totals."
A spokeswoman for Central Maine Power told the Associated Press about 800 power outages were reported by mid-day Monday, far short of the number they'd expected. In eastern New York, wind gusts were forecast to top out at 50 miles per hour.
