The biggest storm of the winter roared across the New York region and the Northeast on Monday with howling winds and heavy snows that disrupted travel, education and commerce. But it gave millions a day off from school and work, and transformed dreary landscapes to meadows of white in the portal to spring.
Multimedia
Related
At a Harlem Charter, School on a Snow Day (March 3, 2009)
Send Your Snowstorm Photos to pix@nyt.com
Storm Total Snow Forecast from the National Weather Service
D.O.T. Snow Emergency Guidelines for Motorists
F.A.A. Flight Delay Information
N.Y. Region School Closings (nbcnewyork.com)
N.Y.C. Department of Education
City Room: Ask About New York’s Weather
Secret Service officers used four wheel drive vehicles to get around the White House as a heavy snow covered the area on Monday. More Photos »
It was no doomsday event, though it dropped 6 to 12 inches of snow in the metropolitan area and more than a foot in parts of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. But it forced cancellation of hundreds of flights, slowed commuters to a crawl, shut down New York City schools for the first time in five years, kept many from work and was blamed for at least four deaths in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
It was a classic swirling monster of a storm that on satellite photos looked more like two or three crocodiles crawling up the Eastern Seaboard. It cloaked states from the Carolinas to Maine in deep snows that pirouetted and drifted in winds that gusted up to 40 miles an hour. Airports were useless, highways were treacherous, thousands of homes lost power and countless businesses opened late or not at all.
Meteorologists tracked the storm with the gravity of church wardens, but for millions of liberated children, and many adults, the realities were lyrics for a winter’s day: awakening to a milk-white world, listening to snow falling in great hissing sweeps, walking down suburban streets draped in silhouettes, sledding and snowboarding in parks.
“It’s like having Vermont in New York City,” Patricia Brody said, skiing along a path in Riverside Park near 108th Street, where the snow was fluffy and deep. “It’s a way to find the country in the city. You’re skiing along in the park at dusk and it’s like a winter wonderland.”
In Central Park, hundreds of children, muffled to the eyes, took over a hill near the Metropolitan Museum of Art for sledding. Ann Spindler and her three children stepped out of a yellow cab and joined them. Museums were closed, as usual on Monday, but it was better to be out in the enchanted land.
At the Crossroads Cafe on Prospect Avenue in Brooklyn, tables were crowded, as if a holiday had been declared. Two men talked baseball. But Elizabeth Hollow, 43, an English teacher at Lycée Français, labored over essays by ne’er-do-wells who were out larking. “Some are sledding and the rest of us are grading papers,” she lamented.
The metropolitan area snows began late Sunday night and fell intermittently, with inch-an-hour bursts in the morning and lesser amounts as the day waned. The big accumulations on Long Island were 14.5 inches in Commack, 13.5 in Orient and 12.8 in Islip. In Connecticut, 14 inches fell in Old Saybrook; in New Jersey, 12.4 inches were reported in Northfield and 11.3 inches in Atlantic City.
In Central Park, 8.3 inches were recorded by late afternoon, well short of the 10-inch record for the date set in 1896. But Fred Gadomski, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, noted that the storm was the biggest in New York City since the two-foot behemoth of Feb. 12, 2006.
While New York City public schools remained open in the Blizzard of 2006, their 1.1 million pupils had a snow day Monday for the first time since Jan. 28, 2004. Schools in Philadelphia and Boston were closed, too, along with districts from Virginia to Maine and thousands of private schools. Some teenagers used the day to shovel snow for a little walking-around money.
For thousands of parents, the snow day was a dilemma. No school. Day care unavailable. What to do with the kids? Christy Contreras, 23, held the hand of her 1-year-old daughter, Ghislaine, as they boarded a No. 1 train at 242nd Street, bound for her job. “It’s terrible,” she said. “I just don’t have anywhere else for her to go. She has to come with me.”
Despite radio announcements in the morning, many parents were unaware of the snow day. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who said the decision to close schools came later than usual because there was hope the storm might weaken, did not sound sympathetic to complaints.
“If you got up this morning, looked outside and the question didn’t come to you right away, hmm, I wonder whether or not school is going to be open today, and you didn’t know enough to call 311, I would suggest another day in school’s probably a good idea,” he said. “I mean, c’mon.”
Getting around was virtually impossible for tens of thousands of air travelers, and a misery for drivers crawling on highways in near-blizzard conditions, although traffic in many areas was less than normal. But delays on suburban commuter trains were minimal, and it was a relatively easy day for those able to take subways and buses in town. Pedestrians faced mounds of snow at crosswalks.
Multimedia
Related
At a Harlem Charter, School on a Snow Day (March 3, 2009)
Send Your Snowstorm Photos to pix@nyt.com
Storm Total Snow Forecast from the National Weather Service
D.O.T. Snow Emergency Guidelines for Motorists
F.A.A. Flight Delay Information
N.Y. Region School Closings (nbcnewyork.com)
N.Y.C. Department of Education
City Room: Ask About New York’s Weather
Airports were socked in with blowing snow, and 900 flights were canceled in the region, most of them at Kennedy International, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said. Some 100 flights were scrubbed at Logan Airport in Boston. In Philadelphia, scores of people were stranded overnight, and flights were canceled or delayed in Baltimore and Washington.
Highways across the region were treacherous, and hundreds of accidents were reported, mostly spinouts and fender-benders. But the police in Greenlawn, N.Y., on Long Island, cited icy roads for the death of Jose Fuentes, 57, of Huntington, who lost control of his vehicle, skidded into traffic and was struck broadside by a van on Monday.
In Boston, a pregnant woman and her mother were killed when their car spun off an icy road and hit a snowplow Sunday night. In Rhode Island, the state police said David Hauser, 47, of West Warwick, was killed Sunday night in Smithfield when his car hit a guardrail, throwing him onto the roadway, where another car struck him.
Also on Long Island, the authorities were investigating whether the death of a 72-year-old woman in Massapequa Park was due to the weather. The woman, identified by the police as Marian Krauss, 72, was found outside her home dressed in winter clothing, around 3:45 p.m. by a landscaper.
Many intercity buses were canceled or delayed in and out of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road said commuter trains ran on or near schedules, and New Jersey Transit reported 10- to 15-minute delays.
In New York City, 2,000 sanitation workers and 1,400 snowplows scraped around the clock to clear 6,000 miles of streets. “It’s like plowing from here to Los Angeles and back,” Mayor Bloomberg said in front of an orange plow at a Sanitation Department garage in Queens.
The Staten Island Ferry was suspended for much of the day. From the Battery in Lower Manhattan to the St. George terminal, surges boomed on the seawalls and the harbor was a vast turbulent field of marbled green-gray waves and whitecaps.
Power failures hit 1,500 homes and businesses in New Jersey, including 990 customers of Atlantic City Electric, 603 customers of Jersey Central Power and Light, and 35 patrons of Public Service Electric and Gas. Service was restored to most during the day. Farther south, Duke Energy reported 100,000 without service in North Carolina and 78,000 in South Carolina. Virginia Power said 114,000 lost power.
Reporting was contributed by Ann Farmer, Jason Grant, Corey Kilgannon, Jennifer 8. Lee, Trymaine Lee, Mick Meenan, Colin Moynihan, Anahad O’Connor, Sharon Otterman, Kenny Porpora, Nate Schweber and A. G. Sulzberger.
No comments:
Post a Comment