Floody Hell
Nor’easter soaks East, floods West Virginia homes; hundreds of flights canceled
By Associated Press
Monday, April 16, 2007 - Updated: 05:40 AM EST
NEW YORK - A nor’easter battered the East with strong wind and pouring rain Sunday, grounding hundreds of airline flights, downing power lines and threatening severe coastal flooding overnight.The storm flooded people out of their homes in the middle of the night in West Virginia and trapped others. Some New Jersey shore residents evacuated, and officials in Connecticut urged some residents along the Long Island Sound to do the same. Inland areas from upstate New York to Maine faced a threat of heavy snow.
One person was killed by a tornado in South Carolina, and two died in car accidents - one in New York and one in Connecticut. The storm system already had been blamed for five deaths on Friday in Kansas and Texas.
Storm warnings and watches were posted all along the East Coast, with coastal flood watches from Maryland to Maine through at least Monday morning.
More than 5.5 inches of rain fell in the New York region Sunday, shattering the record for the date of 1.8 inches set in 1906, according to the National Weather Service. Weather service meteorologist Gary Conte said Sunday night’s high tide was likely to bring coastal flooding on Long Island and in parts of New York City.
About 5 inches fell in southwestern Connecticut, where flooding closed a section of Interstate 95 for about an hour. But Connecticut’s emergency management commissioner, James Thomas, was expecting most of the problems to come Sunday night with the high tide.
We escaped comparitively lightly: major road closures due to mudslides and flooding, some power outages and one country school system closed. I'm looking forward to talking to friends in New York later today to find out how they are doing.
NPR reported that they were using snowplows to push the water out of the way in West Virginia.