NYC May Get 16 Inches of Snow as Storm Gains Strength (Update1)
February 26, 2010, 2:24 AM EST
(Adds National Weather Service extends winter storm warning to 6 a.m. tomorrow in first
paragraph.)
By Brian K. Sullivan and Stuart Biggs
Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. National Weather Service extended its winter storm
warning for New York City to 6 a.m. tomorrow and said as many as 24 inches (61
centimeters) of snow may have fallen by then.
Airlines canceled hundreds of flights as the snow started at about 8 a.m. yesterday.
Temperatures in the mid-30s Fahrenheit (about 1 degree Celsius) kept snow from
sticking for most of the day in the largest U.S. city.
Snow was falling in Central Park and the city’s three main airports, the National Weather
Service said in an update at 1:00 a.m. today after extending the storm warning in an
advisory late yesterday. AccuWeather Inc. warned of downed trees and power lines and
said winds may cause whiteouts in some areas. A man was killed by a falling tree
branch in New York’s Central Park, WNBC reported.
“If people pigeonhole this and say that, ‘oh, this is a snow storm on Thursday,’ they are
missing the big picture,” said Michael Schlacter, chief meteorologist at Weather 2000
Inc. in New York. “This is definitely not just a Thursday story.”
It was the second winter storm of the week for the U.S. Northeast, and came just weeks
after snowfall set seasonal records for parts of the mid-Atlantic coast.
Speculation that the snows would reduce demand for motor fuel contributed to a drop in
gasoline futures. Gasoline for March delivery declined 6.17 cents, or 2.9 percent, to
settle yesterday at $2.037 a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gasoline Demand
“Demand numbers are going to be annihilated by the bad weather,” said Ray Carbone,
president of Paramount Options Inc. in New York, a trader at the Nymex.
More than 1,500 flights were halted across the Northeast yesterday, most of them in
New York, Boston and Philadelphia. That represented about 3 percent of the 50,000
flights scheduled in the U.S. this time of year, according to FlightStats.com, a Web site
that tracks aircraft movements.
Continental has canceled 20 flights in its main jet operations from the Newark, New
Jersey, New York area, and all 200 of its regional partner airlines from Newark’s Liberty
International Airport, said Mary Clark,a spokeswoman for the carrier.
Amtrak canceled eight trains on its Empire Service line in upstate New York yesterday
and some service between New York City and Albany-Rensselaer was temporarily
reduced while CSX Corp., which owns the line, repairs tracks and systems damaged by
trees, said Tracy Connell, a spokeswoman for the passenger railway.
Oil Tankers
CSX, the third-largest U.S. railroad by revenue, said its customers should expect delays
during “the worst of the storm” and that its effects will linger through the weekend. The
lines are used by shippers including coal producers.
Two crude oil tankers put off unloading in Portland, Maine, at least until today, said Tony
Youells, port manager for Inchcape Shipping Services, a shipping agent. Waves as high
as 27 feet are forecast in the waters off Maine, said Jim Hayes, a weather service
meteorologist in Gray, Maine.
“Waves are already washing over roads in southeast Maine,” Hayes said. “We might see
waves this height once or twice a year.”
Winter storm warnings, meaning heavy snow, ice and freezing rain are imminent, were
issued from Maryland to Maine, while blizzard warnings stretched from the mountains of
North Carolina into West Virginia. High-wind warnings for gusts as high as 60 miles per
hour (100 kilometers per hour) were posted for parts of North Carolina, Virginia,
Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and the District of Columbia.
About 75,000 customers in New York and New England were already without power as
the storm moved through the Northeast, according to utilities. A system brought rain to
New York City and almost two feet of snow to western Massachusetts starting Feb. 23,
disrupting air traffic in Newark, Boston, Baltimore and New York.
The new storm will linger over New York because a high pressure ridge over the Atlantic
and eastern Canada is essentially blocking its forward progress, which typically would be
to move out over the ocean, Schlacter said.
--With assistance from Alex Morales in London; Mary Schlangenstein and Barbara
Powell in Dallas; Mary Jane Credeur in Atlanta; Emily Feldman, Paul Burkhardt and
Chris Dolmetsch in New York; and Mario Parker in Chicago. Editors: Charlotte Porter,
Aaron Sheldrick.
To contact the reporters on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at
bsullivan10@bloomberg.net; Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at sbiggs3@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net;
Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net.
Source : Bloomberg