Storm batters the Northeast, knocking out power, grounding flights and flooding roads
NEW YORK — A storm barreled into the Northeast on Monday, flooding roads and downing trees, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, forcing flight cancellations and school closures, and killing at least four people.
More than 5 inches of rain fell in parts of New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania by mid-morning, and parts of several other states received more than 4 inches, according to the National Weather Service. Wind gusts reached nearly 70 mph along the southern New England shoreline.
Power was knocked out for more than 700,000 customers in an area stretching from Virginia north through New England, including over 278,000 in Massachusetts and 263,000 in Maine, according to poweroutage.us.
The weather service issued flood and flash-flood warnings for New York City and the surrounding area, parts of Pennsylvania, upstate New York, western Connecticut, western Massachusetts and parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
An 89-year-old Hingham, Mass., man was killed Monday when high winds caused a tree to fall on a trailer, according to a county district attorney. In Catskill, N.Y., a driver was killed after the vehicle went around a barricade on a flooded road and was swept into Catskill Creek, the Times Union reported. And in Windham, Maine, police said part of a tree fell and killed a man removing debris from his roof. On Sunday in South Carolina, one person died when their vehicle flooded on a road in a gated community in Mount Pleasant.
NOAA has warned of a ‘historically strong’ El Niño through January, but so far, California’s wet season has been notably dry.
Heavy rain and high tides caused flooding along the Jersey Shore. The flooding was made worse by leaf piles that residents had put out for collection but was blocking water from reaching drains. The Delaware River spilled over its banks in suburban Philadelphia, leading to road closures.
Many flights were canceled or delayed across the region. Boston’s Logan International Airport grounded all flights Monday morning because of the poor conditions, leading to more than 100 canceled flights and about 375 delays, according to the flight-tracking service FlightAware. At New York City-area airports, nearly 80 flights were canceled and more than 90 were delayed.
Commuter rail systems were reporting weather-related delays.
In New York City, high winds caused the temporary closure of the Verrazzano Bridge. It reopened later Monday morning, but with a ban on large vehicles. Rhode Island officials also were prohibiting tractor-trailers on the Newport Pell and Jamestown Verrazzano bridges over Narragansett Bay because of the wind.
The storm moved up the East Coast on Saturday and Sunday, breaking rainfall records and requiring water rescues. It brought unseasonably warm temperatures of more than 60 degrees to the Northeast on Monday.
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