‘Snow Hurricane’ Faces New York, Pennsylvania as Storm Nears
Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) — A winter storm threatened to dump more than a foot (30 centimeters) of snow across parts of upstate New York and New England, while forecasters warned of an even more powerful system hitting the northeast tomorrow.
“You may hear it called a ‘snow hurricane’ because blizzard may not even do it justice,” said Alex Sosnowski, an expert senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. “It is like we’re getting a decade’s worth of storms all in one season.”
Warnings for the current storm stretch from Maine through New Hampshire, Vermont and New York state as well as Massachusetts and Connecticut, according to the National Weather Service. Rain was falling today in New York, while inland, it was snowing in Albany, where up to 13 inches of snow were forecast through the night and today, the agency said.
The next storm will develop off the U.S. East Coast out of a system coming up from the Gulf of Mexico, Sosnowski said. They’ll add to what’s already been a benchmark winter in the eastern U.S., where seasonal snowfall records have already been set for Washington and Baltimore.
AccuWeather’s Web site describes the coming storm as “nothing short of a monster” and predicts high winds and heavy rain across Long Island, Connecticut and New York.
“Midday models show a region from Cape Cod to northern Maine receiving hurricane-force winds at the storm’s peak, Thursday afternoon and overnight,” private forecaster MDA Federal Inc. said in a statement. The lowest hurricane-force wind is 74 miles per hour (119 kilometers per hour).
NYC Snow
The storm is forecast to enter New York’s metropolitan area early in the morning on Feb. 25, said Joe Pollina, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, New York. The weather service Web site said up to five inches of snow may fall there tomorrow, with winds gusting as high as 36 miles an hour.
In coastal areas, the storm is likely to draw in warm air that will mean rain, while areas from upstate New York to Ottawa may receive 12 inches or more of snow, Sosnowski said.
“This thing is a little different animal,” Sosnowski said by telephone. “Instead of passing on by, it looks like it is going to hook back.”
[BusinessWeek]
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