A car buried in snow along the Long Island Expressway (REUTERS)
A shirtless jogger runs through Central Park today. (AP)
A child sits buried in the snow waiting for his father to take his photo in Central Park. (REUTERS)
A woman takes a photo of a snow man that was erected at the fountain at Lincoln Center during New York Fashion Week on Friday. (REUTERS)
A massive winter storm dumped as much as 3 feet of snow on Long Island overnight and left thousands there without power while New York City residents, despite a foot of snow, counted themselves lucky Saturday.
Police in Suffolk County, on the eastern end of the island, used snowmobiles to reach some motorists stranded on the Long Island Expressway. Ambulances, fire trucks, police vehicles and some snowplow trucks as well as passenger vehicles got stuck overnight throughout the area, said Vanessa Baird-Streeter, spokeswoman for Suffolk County.
POUGHKEEPSIE MAN STRUCK, KILLED AFTER DRIVER LOSES CONTROL ON SNOWY ROAD
FOLLOW @NYPMETRO ON TWITTER FOR THE LATEST ON THE STORM
About 10,000 utility customers, most in eastern Suffolk, did not have electricity Saturday morning, said Wendy Ladd of the National Grid.
Ladd said those without power could be restored within a day if crews can get to them, but “access is an issue.”
“We have plenty of crews available to do the restoration work, and if we can get to them, we’re saying we can get them back in 24 hours,” Ladd said. “But the issue is whether our big trucks can get to them if streets aren’t plowed.”
Suffolk County was hit harder than neighboring Nassau County, a relief for communities that were flooded during last October’s Superstorm Sandy. The Weather Service said coastal flooding did not create major problems during the new storm.
Gov. Cuomo said Suffolk County got up to 3 feet of snow.
Meteorologist David Stark said the community of Upton, where the weather service has a headquarters, had 30.3 inches of snow. Several other towns topped 2 feet: Setauket, Smithtown, Port Jefferson, Mount Sinai, Islip, Huntington and Commack.
In Nassau, by contrast, Wantagh reported 11 inches.
In New York City, the reading in Central Park was 11.4 inches and 12.1 at LaGuardia Airport. Stark said the city had a longer period of sleet rather than snow, which held town the totals.
But the city was spared the worst of the storm, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
He said more than 2,200 vehicles plowed streets overnight, clearing every major thoroughfare at least once and even most secondary streets. Traffic was flowing easily through most of the city’s busiest streets.
“We’re in great shape. We’re lucky. … We’ve dodged a bullet,” Bloomberg told plow workers at a sanitation garage in Queens.
Bloomberg said all city streets will be cleared of snow by the end of Saturday and that all primary, most secondary and “60 percent” of tertiary streets have already been plowed.
Noting that areas to the north and east of the city got hit far worse, the mayor said he would make the city’s equipment and manpower available if needed in Long Island, Connecticut and elsewhere.
“We want to make sure we provide whatever they need. When we were in trouble, the country came to our aid and we want to make sure we do the same,” he said.
Cuomo said several hundred snow plows from around the state are heading to Suffolk County on Long Island.
Cuomo said people in eastern Long Island should stay home because many roads are still blocked by snow and abandoned cars, and adding more traffic will make it harder for plows and utility trucks to get through.
He said snowplows had a hard time because about 150 cars were stranded on the Long Island Expressway.
Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone said Saturday afternoon that about 200 people were stranded in cars on the Long Island Expressway when they tried to get home ahead of the storm Friday. He said the National Guard used snowmobiles to rescue people and take them to warming shelters.
Asked why the highway hadn’t been closed, Cuomo said it’s “not an easy call” when people need to get home.
Hundreds of motorists had abandoned their vehicles, and even snowplows were getting stuck. Emergency workers used snowmobiles to try to reach stranded motorists, some of whom spent the night stuck in their cars.
Richard Ebbrecht, a chiropractor, left his office in Brooklyn at 3 p.m. on Friday and head for his home in Middle Island, N.Y., in Suffolk County, but got stuck six or seven times on the Long Island Expressway and other roads.
“There was a bunch of us Long Islanders. We were all helping each other, shoveling, pushing,” he said. He finally gave up and spent the night in his car just two miles from his destination. At 8 a.m., when it was light out, he walked home.
“I could run my car and keep the heat on and listen to the radio a little bit,” he said. “It was very icy under my car. That’s why my car is still there.”
Plows and personnel from across the state and New York City were heading to Connecticut and Massachusetts as well as Suffolk County to clear roads, Cuomo said.
City residents didn’t have too much trouble getting around.
“It’s not that bad,” said carpenter Kevin Byrne, as he dug his car out of its Manhattan parking spot. “It’s not as bad as everybody said it was going to be.”
But he said he left his shovel at home.
“I’m using a scraper to shovel out, which is not good,” he said. “But was anybody prepared? The last two winters have been so mild.”
Efrain Burgos, a native New Yorker, took no chances on driving.
“I took the subway for the first time in 10 years,” said Burgos, who took the No. 2 train from his home in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx.
He said that while roads were well-plowed near the Upper West Side neighborhood where he works as a doorman, in the Bronx, “the roads are packed with ice.”
On Father Capodanno Boulevard in Staten Island’s Midland Beach, frigid gusts blew in from the water, but those residents who have moved back in to their houses said the wind wasn’t as bad as feared even at the height of the storm. “Not like during Sandy, when the roof was flying away,” said Dmitriy Pilguy.
He chuckled a bit at the pre-storm hype. “It’s only snow,” Pilguy said as he cleared his driveway. “I’m from Russia. I don’t care.”
Bloomberg said police have been checking on families from Superstorm Sandy who still have no heat but had encountered no problems so far.
Con Edison’s Mike Clendenin said there were just 317 customers without power in the city on Saturday morning, mostly in Brooklyn. He said the number could increase as people wake up and discover they have no electricity.
But he said the low total “is certainly encouraging.” There were no failures reported in Westchester County he said, although some villages there, including Scarsdale and Bronxville, reported more than 20 inches of snow.
Clendenin said there were about 3,000 power failures reported during the storm, “but we’ve been able to keep up and get them back.”
Stark said winds had not been as strong as expected in the northern suburbs, with gusts remaining below 35 mph. In Suffolk, he said, they reached 50 mph.
The New York region’s three major airports have also reopened after the snowstorm but flights are limited.
Port Authority spokesman Anthony Hayes says commercial flights started taking off from Kennedy and LaGuardia airports at around 9 a.m. Saturday. He said commercial flights should take off from Newark Liberty Airport at around 11 a.m.
Hayes says many flights have been canceled and passengers should check with their airline before heading to the airport.
The Port Authority says the first inbound passenger flight at JFK International Airport landed at 9:30 a.m.
Boston’s Logan Airport remains closed but said it expects to reopen Saturday afternoon. Across the region, flights are expected to be back on close to normal schedules on Sunday.
Flight-tracking website FlightAware says airlines have canceled 5,368 flights due to the storm.
New York City subways are running with scattered delays. City buses are running.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority says hourly service on the Metro-North Railroad’s Harlem and Hudson lines will resume after 11 a.m. The MTA says service on the New Haven line will remain suspended because of heavy snow accumulations.
Service is limited on the Long Island Rail Road.
New Jersey Transit resumed bus service north of Interstate 195 as of 7 a.m. Saturday, including service into New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal.
NJ Transit suspended all northern bus service Friday evening due to treacherous driving conditions.
The agency says rail service on the Morris & Essex, Montclair-Boonton and Midtown Direct lines will resume at noon. It was suspended at 8 p.m. Friday.
Meanwhile, Amtrak said the New York-Boston train route would remain closed Saturday as crews cleared tracks of snow and fallen trees. Trains were running south from New York, and between New York and Albany.
Meanwhile, snow totals in New Jersey ranged from 5-15 inches, with the highest snowfalls spread across the northern part of the state while other areas were spared.
The National Weather Service reports River Vale in northern Bergen County got 15 inches. West Milford, Hillsdale and Scotch Plains all got more than a foot of snow. Cedar Grove residents woke up to about 10 inches of snow Saturday morning.
Newark had been projected to get up to a foot of snow or possibly more but received about 5 or 6 inches. About 5 inches fell on Jersey City and about 6 inches fell at Newark Airport.
More than 28 inches of snow had fallen on central Connecticut by early Saturday, and areas of southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire notched 2 feet or more of snow — with more falling.
At least five deaths were being blamed on the storm, three in Canada and two in upstate New York. In southern Ontario, an 80-year-old woman collapsed while shoveling her driveway and two men were killed in car crashes. In New York, a 74-year-old man died after being struck by a car in Poughkeepsie; the driver said she lost control in the snowy conditions, police said.
A 23-year-old man in Germantown, NY has died after he went off the edge of a roadway while plowing his driveway with a farm tractor in Columbia County, state police said.
Troopers say the accident happened shortly after 9 p.m. Friday, about 35 miles south of Albany. The National Weather Service says about 7.5 inches of snow has accumulated in that area overnight. The tractor rolled down a 15-foot embankment.
The man was pronounced dead at Columbia Memorial Hospital. His name hasn’t been released.
In New Jersey, officials say just a few thousand customers lost power during the storm, and nearly all had their service restored by early Saturday afternoon.
Atlantic City Electric had reported about 4,900 people without power earlier in the day, but that number had been whittled to just 20 by Saturday afternoon. And the state’s two largest utilities, PSE&G and JCP&L, reported only minor, scattered outages.
Meanwhile, Orange & Rockland Electric reported no outages in areas it serves in northern Jersey.
On Saturday, Connecticut Gov. Malloy ordered all roads closed until further notice, saying that stalled or abandoned vehicles will only slow the recovery process. The storm dumped more than 2 feet of snow over much of the state.
State police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance says drivers and even some troopers have been getting stuck on the snow-covered highways. He said a pedestrian was struck by a vehicle and killed Friday night in Prospect.
Vance said troopers are still out responding to calls but it’s imperative that people stay off the roads.
In New York City, there will be delayed openings at public libraries in all five boroughs. Most will be open from noon until 5 p.m.
With Post Staff