(Bloomberg) – A potentially record-breaking nor'easter pummeled the U.S. East Coast with wind, snow and rain Friday, grounding more than 2,300 flights and leaving 760,000 homes and businesses without power.
Wind-driven snow battered New York City, Pennsylvania and northern New England, as gusts of more than 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour) were reported at airports in Washington, the National Weather Service said. Tropical-storm strength winds were recorded in Boston.
While the wind and the snow are fierce, coastal flooding could be the worst aspect of the storm.
“This could be one of those storms that goes into the record books,” said Kim Buttrick, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “This is a very dangerous storm.”
Tides, flights, power
In January, a powerful storm drove tides in Massachusetts to their highest on record, flooding parts of Boston and its suburbs. That storm broke a 40-year-old tide record in Boston Harbor when water reached 15.16 feet. That new mark is forecast to fall on Saturday when the harbor rises to 15.4 feet, fueled by a combination of rising seas, the full moon and the storm's power.
“We already had tidal flooding yesterday, and that was just because of the full moon,” said Rob Carolan, a meteorologist with Hometown Forecast Services in Nashua, New Hampshire.
More than 2,300 flights have been canceled around the U.S. Friday, according to FlightAware, an airline-tracking service. American Airlines Group Inc. scrubbed 1,150 flights, or 18% of its daily global schedule, the company said in an emailed statement. Delta Air Lines Inc. canceled about 750 flights to and from the Northeast and New England Thursday night and Friday and warned more disruptions are possible.
Cross winds at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were limiting flights to one primary runway, affecting the use of ground equipment that use lifts — like catering trucks — and de-icing trucks with booms, American said.
More than 760,000 homes and businesses were blacked out from Ohio and North Carolina to Maine as of about 11 a.m. New York time Friday, according to data from utility websites compiled by Bloomberg. That includes more than 280,000 blacked out in Virginia and another 148,000 without power in upstate New York.
The slow speed of the storm will make matters worse, Carolan said. Its progress will be blocked by other weather patterns, preventing it from moving quickly out to sea.
Evacuation plans
Tides could rise 3 feet higher than normal in Jamaica Bay in Queens and along southern Long Island and more than a foot higher off the Battery. In Massachusetts, they could rise by as much as 4 feet, including in Boston Harbor.
Waves higher than 20 feet could crash into coastal towns north and south of Boston and on Cape Cod, washing out roads, damaging homes and leaving people stranded “for an extended time,” the National Weather Service said.
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has urged residents along the coast to come up with evacuation plans before high tide on Friday. Many schools in coastal cities and towns have closed.
Coastal flood warnings, watches and advisories are in effect along the New Jersey coast and as far south as Virginia. More than 1.2 million homes worth more than $468 billion are at risk from coastal flooding in 11 states from Maine to Virginia, according to the Insurance Information Institute in New York.
'Higher tides than hurricanes'
“Nor'easters can cause higher tides than hurricanes,” Ronald Busciolano, a supervisory hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said in a statement. The agency is dispatching crews to monitor the storm from Maine to Delaware.
In addition to the coastal flooding, heavy rain may send rivers over their banks, the weather service said.
Buttrick said residents should heed evacuation notices and no one should go sightseeing. “We don't want any casualties,” she said.
Copyright 2018 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.