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New York City Is Spared Worst Effects of Snowstorm

By MARC SANTORA and EMMA G. FITZSIMMONSJAN. 27, 2015
for The New York Times

After New York City was shut down overnight, with subway service suspended for snow for the first time in its history, it was spared the worst of a snowstorm that swept across the Northeast early Tuesday. As travel bans were lifted and transit services gradually restored, the city slowly returned to its normal rhythms.

But even as buses and trains began to move again, the widespread closings left the streets and sidewalks virtually deserted in the early morning hours. Grand Central Terminal was deserted, Times Square was quiet and the streets of Lower Manhattan were largely empty of financial workers.

The situation on the eastern end of Long Island, parts of Connecticut and the New England coast was more difficult, with winds as high as 48 miles per hour measured at Montauk Point and snow continuing to fall.

“Suffolk County is still getting hit very hard,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said, noting that snowfalls had exceeded two feet in some places. Much of the snow-removal equipment in the city, he said, would be redeployed to the hardest hit areas.

Snowstorm Takes Its Fury to New England

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JESS BIDGOODJAN. 27, 2015

A plow crew helped to pull a Massachusetts state trooper from a snow bank on in Boston on Tuesday. Credit Cj

BOSTON — New England awoke on Tuesday to high winds and whiteout conditions as a strong winter storm moved up the East Coast.

The storm veered away from New York City, leaving less than an foot of snow in Central Park. Hartford also received less than expected, but the storm was barreling down on Boston, where forecasters were still expecting two to three feet.

Already some areas of Massachusetts reported more than a foot of snow, the Weather Service said, with an unofficial total of 16 inches in Plymouth.

The good news for much of New England was that the snow was light and fluffy, not the wet, heavy flakes that coagulate on tree limbs and bring down power lines. As of 6 a.m., about 8,000 homes in Massachusetts, most of them on Cape Cod, were without power, but officials expected more to be reported as people woke up.

By 7 a.m., Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts reported about 15,000 customers had no power, more than 1,000 of them on Nantucket. That was still fewer outages than had been predicted.

Blowing and drifting snow filled streets before dawn on Tuesday in Boston. Credit Steven Senne/Associated Press

States of emergency were in effect across New England, with Maine the last to declare one early Tuesday morning. “The amount of snow and the high winds, along with blowing and drifting snow, makes this storm dangerous for many Mainers,” Gov. Paul R. LePage of Maine said in making the declaration.

Travel bans have not been imposed in Maine or New Hampshire, though speeds on the Maine Turnpike were lowered to 45 miles an hour. Travel bans were in effect in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and most public schools in the region were shut.

Peter Gaynor, the head of the Rhode Island Department of Emergency Management, told CNN that the travel ban had allowed the snowplows to keep up with clearing the roads without having to deal with other vehicles.

Raging winds were the worst aspect of the storm, with gusts raking across Nantucket with hurricane force at up to 78 miles an hour. Flooding was reported along coastal areas, with 20-foot waves in Boston Harbor and surges of up to 25 feet at sea.

The Boston subway system and commuter rail lines were shut, as was Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service. Airports were closed in Boston and Portland, Maine. Officials had prepared shelters in Massachusetts for more than 8,500 people, but as of early morning, only 142 had checked in.

Massachusetts state officials used electronic signs on highways to speak to Boston drivers in their native language: “Wicked Big Storm Coming. Pahk Ya Cah!”

In the category of hell-freezes-over, Roger Carroll of The Telegraph of Nashua, in New Hampshire, sent out this Tweet: “Here’s how you know storm is serious: NH is closing liquor stores on Tuesday. #nhpolitics #hellfreezesover”

Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire said the state was moving to “to take every precaution to ensure the safety of our people and communities.”

Temperatures were much colder than originally forecast, with Boston at 14 degrees and the winds making the air feel like minus 2. But the cold was what made the snow lighter; if it had been warmer, the snow would have been wetter and power outages would have been more extensive.

Snow was forecast to fall through Tuesday night and not taper off until early Wednesday.

“It’s just kind of all white and gray,” Genevieve Hunt, 55, of South Dartmouth, Mass., a town on the state’s south coast, said Monday night.

Referring to wind gusts of up to 60 miles an hour, she added: “It’ll settle down once in a while, but it’s kind of scary when you go to the window and you can’t see what’s going on outside.”

In Providence, 9 inches of snow had fallen by 6 a.m., and wind gusts of 43 miles per hour were creating low visibility.

Schools and businesses were closed across the state, and many people whose jobs required them to be at work had been hunkered down at their workplaces since Monday night. Margaret Van Bree, the president of Rhode Island Hospital and the Hasbro Children’s Hospital, said nurses, doctors, cooks and other workers had slept in the hospital.

“In some conference areas, we have blowup beds, we have cots,” Dr. Van Bree said. Because many patients had canceled elective procedures, some workers would sleep “in some of the recovery beds or on stretchers.”

Dr. Van Bree said she had an air mattress in her office and had brought three changes of clothes to work on Monday.

And Alexandra Weiss, 22, a college student hostess in the restaurant at the Providence Biltmore hotel, said she had been given a complementary hotel room so she could work at the restaurant on Monday night and do a double shift on Tuesday.

“School’s canceled tomorrow,” said Ms. Weiss, who was happy to earn extra money for her spring break. “I’ve never stayed in the Biltmore.”

In midcoast Maine, the snow started in the early morning. Mainers woke up to strong north winds, heavy snow and single-digit temperatures.

Schools and town offices were closed from Kittery, on the New Hampshire border, to Eastport, on the Canadian border.

For those watching for records, the snowfall level to beat in Boston was 27.5 inches, set 12 years ago over Presidents’ Day weekend. It was the largest snowfall here in a 24-hour period.

Michael Kistner, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, said that snow was falling at a rate of three to four inches an hour in southeastern New Hampshire and would continue, “probably through the next four to six hours.”

“It’s the jackpot area,” Mr. Kistner said.