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Record snowfall buries New York City
Nor'easter wallops East Coast, snarls travel
Monday, February 13, 2006; Posted: 1:17 a.m. EST (06:17 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A raging nor'easter howled its way up the East Coast on Sunday, breaking a snowfall record in New York, shutting down airports and dumping more than two feet of snow on some parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.
The storm snarled air traffic nationwide as major airports shut down, though most had reopened by Sunday evening. A Turkish jetliner skidded off a runway at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Sunday night, but no injuries were reported, an airport spokesman said.
Central Park in New York recorded nearly 27 inches of snow by about 4:15 p.m. Sunday, breaking a record of 26.4 inches that had stood since December 1947, according to the National Weather Service.
Other snowfall totals included 27.8 inches at Fairfield, Connecticut; 25.4 inches at New York's LaGuardia Airport; 21.3 inches in Columbia, Maryland, near Baltimore; and more than a foot in parts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, according to the National Weather Service.
The storm packed winds of up to 40 mph as it brushed the East Coast, and some parts of New England remained under blizzard warnings into Sunday evening, the National Weather Service reported.
Lightning and thunder accompanied some of the snowfall. The National Weather Service calls the rare phenomenon "thundersnow."
The heavy snow shut down Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport and all three New York City airports -- LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark-Liberty International. That forced the cancellation of thousands of flights, snarling air traffic nationwide.
But by 6 p.m. Sunday, only LaGuardia remained closed, and delays were reported only at Kennedy.
About 9:20 p.m. Sunday, a Turkish Air flight skidded off the runway at Kennedy and into a grassy field after landing, Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said. None of the 198 passengers aboard the trans-Atlantic flight was injured, he said.
LaGuardia was set to reopen at 6 a.m. Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration reported.
Washington was briefly under a snow emergency Sunday, with 119,000 customers without power at one point, along with 62,000 Baltimore power customers and thousands more in New York and New Jersey.
Transit in New York was also affected as the city's Metro Rail service was halted. The city's subway and bus systems were operating, although buses were running less frequently than usual, according to the Port Authority. The city's sanitation department had 2,500 workers on the streets, each working 12-hour shifts for round-the-clock snow removal as New York prepared for Monday's rush hour.
Boston Public Schools said on its Web site that schools would be closed Monday.
CNN's Deborah Brunswick contributed to this report.
NEW YORK Feb 13, 2006 (AP)— Road crews scrambled to clear streets and travelers stranded at airports tried to get home as the Northeast dug out from a record-breaking storm that dumped two feet or more of snow across the region.
Utility workers were restoring power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses left in the dark. Winds gusting up to 50 mph knocked down and snapped power lines, while others were damaged by falling trees.
The storm blanketed the Eastern Seaboard from North Carolina to Maine over the weekend, dropping 26.9 inches Central Park the heaviest since record keeping began in 1869. The old record was 26.4 inches in December 1947, the National Weather Service said.
While the storm was bad, it would have been worse on a weekday, said Patrick Maloit, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y.
"The headache has been minimized because it happened on a Sunday," Maloit said. "It was good timing for a storm of this magnitude."
Elsewhere, 30.2 inches of snow fell in Fairfield, Conn., 27 inches in Rahway, N.J., and 27 inches at Columbia University, according to unofficial observations reported to the National Weather Service. Just west of Philadelphia, 21 inches were recorded in West Caln Township; the average snowfall for an entire winter in Philadelphia is about 21 inches.
Children were thrilled to dig out their sleds, little-used this winter until now.
"We're hoping for 365 days off from school," said 9-year-old Reagan Manz, playing in Central Park with friends. "We could go sledding the whole time and not get bored."
New York City public schools were to remain open, although some in Long Island and private schools were closed. Philadelphia public and parochial classes were canceled Monday, as were schools throughout central and northeast Maryland.
Two of the three major New York-area airports Kennedy and Newark had reopened with limited service. A Turkish Airlines flight skidded off a runway at Kennedy as it landed Sunday at 9:20 p.m., but none of the 198 passengers was injured, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
