The Big Apple got walloped by Superstorm Nemo overnight, prompting thousands of canceled airline flights, suspended train and bus service and gasoline shortages.
Gov. Cuomo declared a state of emergency, giving the city and other New York municipalities the flexibility to deal with what threatened to be a storm of historic magnitude.
Workers fled their offices early to hunker down for the night — as Mayor Bloomberg warned drivers to keep off the roads.
NOAA satellite images show the storm system over the Northeast. (AP)
Visitors bundle up as they walk through Times Square Friday night. (Christopher Sadowski)
Residents across the region are digging out this morning. (Christopher Sadowski)
WE SEE YOUR KNEES! This hot-blooded gal takes a “short” cut, exposing her legs to the elements in Midtown while her prudent pals stay a bit warmer in the superstorm. (ZUMAPRESS.com)
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“Stay off the city streets,” Bloomberg advised at a news conference yesterday afternoon. “Stay out of your cars.
“We’ve got to prepare for the worst case. We’re ready for anything.”
The snow had stopped in Manhattan by early Saturday morning as residents started digging themselves out. The snow total in Central Park was 11.4 inches by 8 a.m.
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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.
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.
Rail service on the Morris & Essex, Montclair-Boonton and Midtown Direct lines remains suspended from Friday but officials were taking steps to expedite the restoration of service once inspections were conducted.
More than 5,300 flights through Saturday were still cancelled, though and JFK and LaGuardia airports in New York are still closed, as is Boston’s Logan Airport.
But, Newark Airport is scheduled to reopen at 8:30 a.m. Saturday after being closed overnight, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
At least four deaths were being blamed on the storm, three in Canada and one in 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.
More than 650,000 people across the Northeast were without power this morning, with most of the outages occurring in New England.
New York City has suffered surprisingly few power outages during the snowstorm that raged overnight, but eastern Long Island is a different story.
Wendy Lang of National Grid says there are about 10,000 customers without electricity this morning on the island, most in hard-hit eastern Suffolk County.
She says they can get most customers back on line within 24 hours if crews can reach them.
Long Island got the heaviest snow, according to the National Weather Service, which said 30.3 inches fell on Upton and several towns topped two feet.
Con Edison spokesman Mike Clendenin says the city has just 317 customers out, 206 in Brooklyn. No outages were reported in Westchester County.
In New Jersey, the state’s two largest utilities were reporting minimal outages as of Saturday morning.
Public Service Electric & Gas says it had 16 customer outages as of 5:30 a.m. Saturday. At one point 2,200 customers in Elizabeth were affected, but PSE&G says they were restored Friday night. Jersey Central Power & Light, the state’s second-largest utility, reports 16 outages at 7 a.m.
It’s a far cry from the 2.7 million customers left in the dark after Superstorm Sandy last October, or a similar number affected by a snowstorm in October 2011.
Forecasters said wind gusts exceeding 75 mph could cause more widespread power outages and whip the snow into fearsome drifts.
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.
Among yesterday’s major developments:
* The storm left hundreds of cars stuck on the Long Island Expressway.
* More than 1,700 flights were canceled in and out of La Guardia, JFK and Newark airports as wind gusts were expected to hit 50 mph.
* Forecasters predicted that some coastal areas damaged three months ago by Hurricane Sandy would suffer flooding this morning from a storm surge of one or two feet above normal tides.
* New York City deployed 1,700 snowplows, 450 salt spreaders and 65 front-end loaders for a cleanup mission that will continue through the weekend.
And some 250,000 tons of salt were ready to be spread.
* Gov. Cuomo shut down Metro-North Railroad lines indefinitely as of 10 p.m. last night, with Grand Central Terminal closing at about midnight. The Long Island Rail Road suspended service on parts of the Montauk branch.
* Worried about a repeat of gas shortages seen in Sandy’s aftermath, motorists fueled up at stations around the region, with some running out of gas and most reporting long lines.
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A key tanker-delivery fill-up terminal on Long Island near the Queens border ran out of gas yesterday, and an estimated 10 percent of the service stations on the Island also came up empty.
* Con Edison promised to have 500 workers performing damage assessment to power lines, and 250 outside contractors and other personnel lined up to help with power restoration. The utility urged people to steer clear of downed wires. The Con Ed Web site showed only a small number of scattered outages this morning.
Long Island Power Authority reported 10,000 customers without power at 5:30 a.m.
* The NYPD added personnel to its Highway Division and Emergency Service Unit in neighborhoods that had already been socked by Sandy.
The FDNY also added an extra firefighter to each engine unit throughout the city as a precaution, citing the increased difficulty of battling blazes in the snow. It also deployed 100 extra ambulances on the streets.
* Alternate-side parking rules and parking-meter rules were suspended across the city through tomorrow. And senior centers also were closed today.
In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick signed an executive order barring all private cars from highways and secondary roads in the state effective at 4 p.m. yesterday.
Connecticut also declared a state of emergency, with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy imposing a travel ban on the state’s limited access highways. Utilities reported more than 23,000 customers without power.
Bloomberg warned motorists to stay home so the city’s armada of plows, salt trucks and front-end loaders could start quickly clearing the streets.
“City sanitation workers are on a full mobilization and have been since Thursday night. They’re on 12-hour shifts,” he said.
“By [this] morning I would expect most streets to be more than passable. We don’t think it’ll be that big a deal,” he added.
Still, “ ‘stay home’ is a good rule,” he told Gotham residents.
“My biggest concern is that people go out and walk, slip, fall into traffic. You can’t take nature too lightly. It’s certainly not going to be Hurricane Sandy. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get badly hurt or killed if you’re not careful.”
Meteorologists appeared more alarmed. Nemo is “a very dangerous situation, and people need to take proper action,” said Louis Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service.
Some residents and visitors, meanwhile, were glum about the storm putting a serious damper on their weekend activities.
Cyrus Laali, a 30-year-old chiropractor from Texas, was walking through the onset of yesterday’s mess on the streets of SoHo with his 27-year-old girlfriend.
“I’m coming from Texas. It’s 70 and sunny,” Laali said. “I love New York, but I didn’t think I’d be greeted with this.”
But Betty Kim, 31, of Brooklyn, said the storm won’t spoil her plans.
“I’ll be going full throttle hitting bars and restaurants with my friends. I’m really not afraid of the storm,” she said.
With AP