By weather.com and msnbc.com news services
PHILADELPHIA -- A spring nor'easter packing soaking rain and high winds churned up the East Coast, unleashing a burst of winter and up to a foot of snow in higher elevations inland and sparking concerns of potential power outages and a wild commute to start the work week in the Northeast.
"It's unusual, but not unheard of," said Kevin Fitzgerald, a National Weather Service meteorologist in State College, Pa., where the eastern part of the state saw a rain event, and the west, northwest and higher elevations dealt with snow.
Up to 12 inches of snow was expected in the higher elevations of central and western Pennsylvania, as well as New York state, south of Buffalo.
A winter storm warning was issued for parts of northeastern Ohio, where 3 to 7 inches of snow was forecast.
"Low pressure will intensify as it moves up the Eastern Seaboard from North Carolina later Sunday into the interior Northeast Monday," said Jonathan Erdman, a senior meteorologist
with weather.com. "In concert with this surface low, a powerful dip in the jet stream and just enough cold air near the surface will team up to produce heavy, wet snow. The areas of concern are western New York, western Pennsylvania, extreme eastern Ohio, parts of northern West Virginia and extreme western Maryland."
From the New Jersey shore north through New York City and into southern New England the coastal storm was expected to bring up to 4 inches of rain, with the heaviest early Monday.
50 mph gusts
Sustained winds of 20-30 mph were predicted throughout the Northeast, and gusts of up to 50 mph were expected off Cape Cod, Matthew Belk of the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass., said late Sunday.
Flood advisories and warnings were issued throughout the Northeast.
In the areas blanketed by April snow, a slippery and slushy Monday morning commute was expected.
One of the biggest concerns with the storm was the potential for power outages due to limbs and branches weighed down by heavy snow falling onto power lines.
Buffalo-based weather service meteorologist Sean Smith said the slow-moving storm could linger off the Northeast through Monday before moving out sometime Tuesday.
Disruptions
The Sunday storm caused plenty of disruptions. Major League Baseball postponed games in Boston, New York and Washington. The scheduled arrival of the space shuttle Enterprise in New York City was pushed back, and an Earth Day celebration at a park in Virginia Beach, Va., was canceled.
The rainfall was a welcome in parts of the Northeast, which is below normal for this time of year.
"We're down 7 or 8 inches," weather service forecaster Charlie Foley said. "This won't completely wipe out the deficit but it will certainly help."
Even Lake Champlain on the Vermont-New York border, normally close to flood stage this time of year because of rain and snowmelt, is near a record low. Just a year ago, it approached its highest level on record.
Another unseasonable nor'easter last year just before Halloween dumped up to 2 feet of wet, heavy snow that snapped tree limbs and power lines, and knocked out power to more than 3 million customers in the Northeast.
In Connecticut, it broke a state record for the number of power company customers left in the dark by a single storm that had been set only two months earlier when the remnants of Hurricane Irene slammed the state as it barreled up the Eastern Seaboard.
The worst of the flooding from Irene was in Vermont and northern New York, where cleanups continue seven months later. Farmers are still grappling with crop-smothering rocks, trees, gravel and sand left behind when the flood waters receded. But the dry weather has eased the threat the debris that litters the landscape will rush downriver again.
Farther south, the rain intensified throughout the day Sunday over the Baltimore and Washington metro areas, where drivers were warned drivers to beware of low visibility and slick roadways. Boaters on the Chesapeake Bay were cautioned about the winds.
In Florida, a woman had to be rescued Saturday night during thunderstorms after disappearing while out on Tampa Bay. She was unfamiliar with her watercraft and also unfamiliar with the bay and got stuck on an island, the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said. Officers found her soon after she was reported missing, as severe thunderstorms loomed overhead and she frantically called for help.
In Rockport, Mass., the storm forced authorities to halt until Tuesday a search for a missing 2-year-old girl who apparently disappeared from a beach Thursday when her mother went to retrieve a lost ball. The beach is known for strong riptides.
Authorities in New York also suspended work that began last week on digging up a basement in a search for the remains of 6-year-old Etan Patz, who disappeared in 1979 on his walk to his school bus stop.
The Associated Press and weather.com contributed to this report.
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that bad ole ''liberal hoax'', you just cant trust him can ya?
It's kind of early to be that drunk, isn't it?
Well, maybe not for you.
Exactly. 90 degrees one week and feet of snow the next. It's all a conspiracy to make Al Gore rich.
I got suspended for a week for bringing politics into a non political discussion ! Guess thats just me though.
lusitania, try this, change what you said about gore or obama, change it to george bush and see if MSNBC blocks you this time. Just saying.
lusitania, its msnbc man, change the post from oboma, al gore to george bush or chaney and I'm sure they will welcome you back with open arms. Just saying.
How I agree with you 100% grant. There has been a few unusual weather patterns within the past year. But one person said in this article, 'it's unusual, but not unheard of...'
Strawman...
The NWS forecaster said that this kind of Spring storm is not unheard of, and he is right, as on May 1st of 1982, Albany and all across the New York Thruway and Mass Pike, from Buffalo to Springfield, got as much as 13 inches of snow that day too. Perhaps the local snow-removal folks will have learned from that snowstorm 30 years ago and left the plows attached to the salt trucks this Spring, so that traffic doesn't come to a complete standstill???
The New York Yankees had their home Opening Day postponed in 1982 because of a storm that included 10 inches of snow. Snow fell throughout the day during their home opener in 1996. As stated in the article, this is unusual, but not unprecedented.
Seems like there are quite a few folks posting here that don't agree with global climate change. Just keep sticking your heads in the sand folks. Just because of previous instances doesn't mean it's not happening. The weather changes are not limited to the east coast or particular states, it is happening everywhere on the planet and mankind (there is an oxymoron for you) is responsible. Where I live in the North West, we are getting record high temperatures, low snow levels, etc.
climate change and global warming is about extremes,like the extreme stupidity on here,you people should be able to understand that .keep denying it, Al Gore will be laughing his butt off when a tornado rips thu your town, and you get the 100 degree heat all summer with no rain. Look at the people in texas, they denied it too, some of them may be changing their minds by now.
So, it snowed hard for the first time all this past Winter, eh? That's too bad, and yet, it will also help to reduce the wildfire danger there too! You want it a little more like Springtime, you should have been here in Denver today, where it was 88 degrees on April 24th, after virtually no snowfall or rain since February. Normally, as any local weatherman will tell you, March is our snowiest month, except lately, as climate change hits here, it has rarely been cold-enough to snow. This year our average high temperature for March was over 60 degrees, or close to 20 degrees above average, and Denver was not the only region to have had abnormally high temperatures or abnormally low rain or snowfall this Spring either.
I was just in Santiago, Chile (a rapidly-growing modern urban area the size of Chicago) back in January, where they are very worried about global warming, because the glaciers that supply Santiago with drinking water, a substantial portion of local agricultural irrigation water, and almost all hydro-electric and local industrial-use water, have now shrunk by an average of 80-90% over the last 40 years, as average temperatures at high altitude in the Andes are up by 5 degrees Celsius (or 9 degrees Fahrenheit).
In Santiago I attended an urban sustainability conference where the one group discussion, chaired by the head of their environmental ministry, was a rather frank look at power generation and supply options if the current warming trend continues for another 10 years. Today just like here there is a strong environmental protection movement which is 100% opposed to the construction of new hydroelectric dams, and has mounted huge street demonstrations against several proposed dams in the southern part of Chile in what is now a national park there. Chile does not have substantial natural gas supplies, its coal supplies are well more than half used-up, and today like America is importing over half of their energy needs.
Frankly the future of Santiago and its 8 million residents is starting to look rather bleak, and so is the future of many of our own Southwest US urban residents too, as without enough seasonal water flow, we can't grow enough crops or generate enough electrical power either. That is the one big problem with capitalism, is that it demands an annual growth rate on a planet of finite size, which means that sooner or later, we will run out of the necessary raw resources necessary to sustain continued population and economic growth with, which will cause absolute havoc to our continuing ability to fund our ongoing national debt service with too!!!
Also back in January I had a frank discussion with two US PH.D. urban planning professionals about urban sustainability and the logistical needs of continuing to supply urban populations with food and other consumer goods in another 40-50 years when we run substantially out of oil, and we came to the conclusion that the maximum sustainable urban population given a scenario without oil for fuel, and without phosphorus for fertilizer, would be in cities of under 200,000 people maximum given current urban densities of urban areas that size.
Furthermore, if population density was substantially increased, you might squeeze another 100,000 people into an urban area of 200,000 size and still be able to feed everyone given farming and shipping distance constraints, which means that any city which is currently substantially larger than 250,000 people today is most likely not a good place to invest in for the long-term, though some urban areas near coastal regions might sustain more people if food can be shipped-in by waterborne methods, and cities nearby to potential undeveloped hydroelectric locations might be able to ship food in from further distances using electrically-powered railroads too. (Using current technology, neither solar nor wind power is capable of producing enough power to substantially change the urban supply logistics distance equation, though tidal power and possibly geothermal power could).
So, If I was a younger person today, I might consider buying-up a little land with water rights off the beaten path near the Canadian border, someplace where windpower potential would be at its greatest, as when global warming drives everyone south of I-70 northward in search of sustainable living conditions, my guess is that the government of our neighbor to the north may not want to allow hordes of American climate refugees across the border to plunder the remainder of Canada's own remaining resources with too!!!
Meanwhile, here is a little good reading, which I hope all of you find useful in planning your future, and that of your kids and grandkids. The new book The End of Growth, written by one of the world's leading resource-depletion experts, Richard Heinberg, was published last Summer. I am afraid that there is a whole lot more to global climate change (and resource-depletion vs continued population and economic growth) than how much snow that we get in March or April.
Here is a link to chapter summaries from the book:
http://www.postcarbon.org/end-of-growth-chapters/
Just another day in paradise for me.. Hello from Hawaii
Global warming my a$$.
Its called climate change.
Edit: On the heels of one of the warmest winters on records.
Man, thats like straight from an oil company...dollar signs and everything.
Europe had a cooler winter than normal. When will people stop gauging Global climate based on the U.S.? Other reports have noted glaciers are growing in Asia.
Just get used to climate changing, that's what is has always done and continue to do.
Dude,
2011 was the 9th hottest year on record, .22 degrees cooler than the hottest...2010.
When will people stop looking at global warming in terms of small geographic locations...
But to deniers, I suppose the century long average is wrong, not the current data...
Sigh....yes it has, and it has changed dramatically with respect to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, thanks for accepting that. However, according to the available data, never this fast and never without a cause. This cycles cause is humans...
But I am glad you admit the climate is sensitive to change, problem is you don't complete your logic, we need to be careful NOT to be the driving force behind that change.
The only thing your ass has to do with it is, you've got your head stuck up it.
You can't expect Barny and Fred to look any further past their beer-guts for global concerns can you?
Add 6 billion people to the mix and tell me that has no impact on climate change!
Stress the NOT UNHEARD OF part...
Look up the more important part and don't get stuck on two words.
Trends, trends, trends. Of course it's not "unheard of". What is "unheard of" are the number of "extreme weather events" across the United States are on the rise and costing billions of dollars in damages each year.
They'll make it through it. They have before.
March and April are always mixed bags of weather.
Generally on the outer sides of the storm its a clear day..
Come on guys, 1 storm is not a case for or against climate change. It is a freaky storm and I can tell you growing up in Buffalo, NY is NOT the first time they saw snow in April.
Take it for what it is...another chance for those of us who moved from Buffalo to Charlotte to call up and harass our relatives who stayed up north about the weather...
You too..... well all I can say is Go BILLS ! Told my friend in Jamestown NY we were going out on the boat today.
Global warming means erratic weather, not just hot weather (DEAN WHO POSTED ABOVE). We can expect more springs running the Air Conditioner in early March and the Heater in late April..... And just imagine what this does to the health and wellbeing of all the spring plant life trying to follow their natural schedules.
Adaptation.
its april, weather changes, etc etc. have vun in the snow snow birds
So, the northeast has weather - big deal!
I guess if it's not about you, it's not news.
Snow in late April? 3 digit temps in the South in late April? Climate change? What climate change?
Easily brainwashed are we? No you must be right, if YOU'VE never experienced this kind of weather before, it MUST be a "new, freak occurance" for the whole world... And I take it no elders in your family have yet told you about how they've seen this before when they were kids? (I'm from northern NJ also.)
Right. Northernnjgal, like you people never get snow. Didn't they build a ski resort in northern NJ BECAUSE you get snow and a lot of it at times. I lived in the lower Catskill Mountain for 40 years before moving to NJ and this kind of storm is NOT abnormal for this time of year.
Northern:
It's called "weather". Learn the difference between weather and "climate" and you'll not only be smarter, you might actually begin to understand what people are talking about.
It's always the truly ignorant ones who mistake a weather event for climate, then make fools of themselves in public by telling everyone they don't know the difference.
Global warming ! No matter what the unusual weather is, the media likes to blame it on global warming.
Yes, it is either global warming or Zimmerman's fault.
It is weird weather.
There was not much of a winter in some places, but it looks like that delay is happening now.
So go make a frosty snow man ha ha ha
later.
WHATEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;-)
It's snowing here in western PA, got about 2-3 inches so far. It's wet, heavy and slushy. No need to go out today.
OK, could you folks in the north east puuuullllleeeeseeee send us some of that snow to southeastern New Mexico?
We are really hurting.
While you're enjoying the snow it's going to be 82 here in Greeley CO, time to ride the Harley.
Funny.
Don't you just hate that global warming stuff?
winter is finally hear in the north east ,but its a day late and a dollar short !,fck ol' man winter
I know what happened! Everybody in the Northeast bought a Chevy Volt or Toyota Prius. They saved the earth and it cooled. Awesome. If they would stop farting it would help even more. Go green!
Mention that a snowstorm is about to occur and all the fruits and nuts come out and start theorizing. Funny how they are the first to tell us that a cold spell does not debunk the theory of warming, yet when a snowstorm is coming they whine that this is the very freak event that is caused by the warming. Call me in 30 years and we'll see what the climate is up to, and then see if the Chicken-Littles were correct. Sorry for the rant, but I watched that dumba$$ movie "The Day After Tomorrow" yesterday and I'm irritated. But then I watched the first "Ace Ventura" movie and it calmed me down. Peace Out!
It will probably be a record snowfall for this time of year followed by a record snow melt and record flooding. Climate change does not mean that temperatures are uniform across the planet. There will be variations because of geographic location and altitude of the region. As heat is trapped in the lower atmosphere ( example - look at the brown air trapped in the valleys in and around Los Angelas in the summer) the upper atmospere becomes cooler causing a greater difference in temperature. The warmer air increases the amount of water vapor the air can support resulting in increased humidity. When this humid air comes in contact with the cooler atmosphere it results in greater amounts of rain fall or snow depending on the region of the country and the time of year. Think about this, when warm air is blown across ice in a closed room the ice melts and it lowers the temperature in the room. This is the principle your air conditioner works on. As warmer air is carried across cooler regions in the north we get increased snow melt ( the warmer the air the greater the cooling affect from increased snow melt) and air currents carry this cooler air to the south beneath warmer layers of air because cool air sinks and heat rises. CO2 limits how high the warmer air will rise and the cooler air turns the increased water vapor in the warmer layer to snow and rain. Greater differences in temperature cause more violant springs, summers falls and winters (Tornadoes and Rainfall and flooding in spring and early summer, Drought in summer, Hurricanes in fall and snowstorms in winter and early spring). This is climate change.
Notice how a cold event is basically brushed off and ignored but a warm event like a heat wave that isn't unheard of either gets shouted from the mountain tops as a sign that man is destroying the planet with global warming CO2?
Two words.............HAARP antennas!!
:)