My Life and Times

January 24, 2005Across Northeast, Out Come Shovels and SledsBy ROBERT D. McFADDEN Air travel remained a mess, but highways and many streets were passable, railroads ran mostly on time and New York metropolitan area residents began digging out yesterday as a powerful weekend storm that buried much of the Northeast under a foot or two of snow churned out into the Atlantic. As the trailing edge of the vast storm passed, blue skies and brilliant sunshine broke through the gloom just after noon in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. And as if on cue, battalions of shovelers, sledders, skiers and dog-walkers emerged from a day of hibernation - bundled up against 20-degree cold and 30-mile-an-hour winds - to labor and frolic in the drifts.But with 12 to 18 inches of snow on the ground in New York City and 18 to 21 inches in parts of New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut, a huge cleanup remained. City officials said the snowplows would be out all night, and the commuter railroads and bus lines for this morning's commute would be near normal, if the hordes that usually drive to work heed the officials' advice to use mass transit.A fire in a subway signal relay room, however, meant that service on the A and C lines, two of the city's busiest, would be suspended or sharply reduced throughout today, transit officials said. Five storm-related deaths were reported in the city, including that of a 10-year-old Brooklyn girl who was struck by a city plow as she played in a snowbank at Wolcott and Richards Streets in Red Hook. The driver, who apparently did not notice the child, drove away and was being sought, the police said. Four other people died, apparently of heart attacks, while shoveling snow, city officials said. A woman was killed by a Long Island Rail Road train at the Malverne station, but it was not clear whether the death was weather-related. New York City schools will be open today, but all after-school programs and field trips have been canceled, said Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Education. Some buses may be canceled or delayed, she noted. In New Jersey and Connecticut, the decision to open late or cancel classes is usually made by individual districts. The morning forecast called for sunshine and temperatures in the 20's.The aftermath of the storm brought a quiet loveliness to the landscape. The snow filled country hollows, painted the corners of windowpanes and left creamy sculptures atop homes and fences. Cars were buried at curbsides by plowed snow or drifts, but owners were told not to worry: The city has suspended alternate-side parking regulations until Saturday.Jeff Warner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, called the storm memorable but hardly a record-breaker in New York. "This will be in the top five January snowstorms since 1900," he said. January, perhaps because it is the coldest month on average, is less snowy, he noted.As recorded by the National Weather Service, accumulations in the city totaled 13.8 inches in Central Park and up to 17.5 inches in Brooklyn, 15.5 inches in Queens and 17 inches on Staten Island. On Long Island, West Babylon had 19.6 inches, Baiting Hollow 19, the Hamptons 18 and Farmingdale 16.5. In New Jersey, Rutherford in Bergen County and West Milford in Passaic County both had 21 inches. In Connecticut, Old Saybrook had 17 inches, and Milford and Montville Center 18.5 each.The girl killed by the snowplow, identified by the police as Markita Weaver, was sitting atop a large snowdrift waiting for a friend to cross a street when a city plow drove by and struck her about 3 p.m., police and witnesses said. As the driver turned right from Richards Street onto Wolcott Street, he struck the girl and her friend ran to her sister, who was in an apartment nearby, said Paris A. Salley, 23, who lives in the building. He said he came down and saw Markita covered in snow, bleeding from her face."There was blood everywhere," Mr. Salley said.Police and sanitation investigators inspected four snowplows that had covered the area, but found no evidence, the authorities said.In the New York area, it was an air traveler's nightmare. Thousands of passengers were stymied by flight cancellations and delays. All three metropolitan airports - Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International and La Guardia - remained open throughout the storm, but few flights got out, and passengers checked into airport hotels or camped out in airline lounges. More than 1,200 flights were canceled as of 7 p.m. yesterday - 400 at La Guardia, 454 at Newark and 380 at Kennedy - atop the 700 cancellations at the three airports on Saturday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey reported. Even for flights getting out, there were extensive delays at La Guardia. Passengers at home were told it would be folly to go to an airport without checking with their airlines. The AirTrain remained shut down yesterday at both Newark and Kennedy Airports, and travelers relied on buses to take them to terminals. One passenger trying to fly home to Minneapolis, Mark O. Sullivan, said he arrived more than two and a half hours early for his flight, but still missed it because of the long lines to get on the buses."They've had since Saturday night to be ready for this, and they still aren't," Mr. Sullivan said. "There's nobody there who knows what is going on, and there's no other way to get to airplanes."The Long Island Rail Road reported several disruptions, including a morning suspension of service between Great Neck and Port Washington because of a power problem. Service on the Ronkonkoma branch was suspended later for plowing. Brian P. Dolan, a spokesman, predicted a near-normal rush today, with 10- to 15-minute delays. Metro-North Railroad, which normally runs 320 trains on a Sunday, cut service to a quarter of that yesterday, to one train every two hours on most of its lines to keep the fleet in working order - especially the older diesels on the New Haven line - for this morning's commute, said Marjorie Anders, a spokeswoman."It was a conscious and, I believe, prudent decision to limit service during the height of the storm in order to preserve the fleet and prepare for the morning rush tomorrow," she said. The railroad began adding trains about 4 p.m. yesterday and said it would restore full service by this morning, she said.New Jersey Transit, which operates rail and bus services across the state and into Manhattan, noted that Amtrak, which uses some of the same tracks and switches on its Northeast Corridor, was planning to restrict switch movements today. As a result, New Jersey Transit said it would limit its corridor trains to every 15 minutes between 5 and 10 a.m. between Trenton and New York.In addition, it said, diesel trains will be run on the North Jersey Coast Line, and on its Morris and Essex Lines its Midtown Direct service will run to and from Hoboken, where customers may connect to a PATH train for New York. New Jersey Transit trains, buses and light-rail trains were running on or close to schedule yesterday.There were, in retrospect, relatively few power failures in the metropolitan area. The Jersey Central Power and Light Company, serving central and northern New Jersey, reported that about 1,000 customers were briefly without power in scattered areas of Monmouth and Ocean Counties early yesterday. In Connecticut, about 2,200 homes were blacked out.The apparent reason, said Mr. Warner of Penn State, was that the snow was relatively dry. Unlike wet snow, dry flakes are light and fluffy and do not weigh down and snap tree branches and power lines. Dry snow is also easier to shovel and plow. But there is one downside, Mr. Warner noted: It does not make a good, hard-packed snowball.Contributing reporting for this article were Sewell Chan, Anne Farmer, John Holl, Jennifer Medina, Adam Sank and Robin Stein
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