The sun shone down on much of the US East Coast on Monday, a day after a vicious northeaster brought blizzard conditions to many areas, and left more than 100,000 customers without power for a stretch that could last into Tuesday.
Winds that had gusted to more than 129kmp/h on Sunday died down on Monday, and temperatures climbed as people emerged from their homes to dig out.
The storm dumped snow from Virginia to Maine, but Massachusetts bore the brunt of the fury, with the neighbouring towns of Sharon and Stoughton getting more than 76cm of snow.
More than 100,000 lost power at the height of the storm, mostly in Massachusetts. That had dropped to about 35,000 by Monday afternoon, mostly on hard-hit Cape Cod. No other states reported widespread outages.
Authorities on New York’s Long Island reported three storm-related deaths. Suffolk County police said an elderly man fell into a swimming pool while shovelling snow and was pronounced dead after resuscitation attempts failed. Nassau County officials said two men aged 53 and 75 died in the town of Syosset while shovelling snow.
In and around New York City, snow totals ranged from a few inches north and west of the city to more than 61cm in Islip on Long Island, according to the US National Weather Service.
Winds gusted as high as 134km/h on Cape Cod. Coastal towns flooded, with wind and waves battering Weymouth, south of Boston, flooding streets with a slurry of frigid water, according to video posted on social media. Other videos showed a street underwater on Nantucket and waves crashing against the windows of a building in Plymouth.
Forecasters watched closely for new snowfall records, especially in Boston. The Boston area’s modern snowfall record for a winter storm is 70cm, set in 2003.
Boston resident Bao Ha, 26, got a shock when he went outside Monday morning.
“It’s funny, it didn’t look so bad when I looked out the window this morning,” he said as he shovelled the sidewalk in front of his home in Waltham outside Boston, which according to the National Weather Service, got 40cm of snow. “But it’s light, so it’s easy to shovel.”
Climate change, particularly the warming ocean, probably influenced the strength of the storm, atmospheric researchers said.
Much warmer ocean waters “are certainly playing a role in the strengthening of the storm system and increased moisture available for the storm,” said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado. “But it isn’t the only thing.”
The storm had two saving graces: Dry snow less capable of snapping trees and tearing down power lines, and its timing on a weekend, when schools were closed and few people were commuting.
The US National Weather Service considers a storm a blizzard if it has snowfall or blowing snow, as well as winds of at least 56km/h that reduce visibility to under half a kilometre or less for at least three hours. In many areas, Sunday’s storm met those criteria.
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