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A Winter Wonderland...
I'm tired, out of breath, and trying to thaw out my fingers and toes. Ray Henry, below, says it much better than I could right now...I need my strength for shoveling out my car that is buried under a snow mound.
"First big winter storm sweeps into New EnglandBy Ray Henry, Associated Press Writer �|� December 9, 2005
The first major storm of the winter dumped more than a foot of snow on parts of New England Friday, pelted others with sleet and freezing rain, and even packed jolts of thunder and lightning.
The storm, which moved into the Northeast from the Ohio River Valley, intensified as it passed south of Nantucket on Friday morning, said Charlie Foley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass.
In Boston, (we are 18 miles north of Boston) a plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Logan International Airport after it was struck by lightning as it approached the runway. No injuries were reported among the 35 passengers and three crew members on board Comair Flight 5437 from Baltimore, but an airport spokesman said the plane suffered minor damage.
Janie Brooks, one of the passengers, said it was a "lovely flight" before the lightning struck.
"There was a large ball of orange something -- very loud and very bright and very bumpy. We were a little scared," Brooks told WBZ-TV.
Logan was closed later in the afternoon amid heavy snow and high winds, leaving travelers stranded. One runway reopened at 5:05 p.m.
"We're slipping and slopping," said Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Logan.
The storm was expected to be gone by nightfall, Foley said, but not before leaving much of the region under a thick blanket of snow.
The heaviest snowfall was along Massachusetts-New Hampshire line, where flakes were falling at a rate of two inches per hour for much of the afternoon.
Cheshire and Hillsborough counties, in New Hampshire, had seen more than 14 inches by mid-afternoon, while Gardner and Warwick, Mass., each had a foot of snow.
"This was some deep stuff," said Duffy Tougas, 36, who spent a busy day shoveling and plowing in Northampton, Mass., for a landscaping company. "Everything has been pretty slow. Lots of people are on the roads who shouldn't be."
As the storm raced northeast into the Gulf of Maine, the clash of warm and cold air spawned the electrical storm, Foley said.
"It's uncommon," to have thunder and lightning during a winter storm, he said. "(But) I wouldn't say it's rare."
Morning snow in Boston gave way to rain and sleet, but reverted to snow that fell so fast during the afternoon that visibility was near zero.
At least 9 inches of snow fell in Foster, R.I., with similar accumulations elsewhere in the state. T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I., closed at about 2:30 p.m. for incoming and outgoing flights, spokeswoman Patti Goldstein said. Crews were working to clear the runways of snow.
Rhode Island State Police responded to about 50 accidents, mostly fender-benders and cars that slipped off the road, said Capt. James Swanberg.
The towering Claiborne Pell Bridge, linking Jamestown and Newport, R.I., was closed because of the weather.
Massachusetts State Police also reported many spinouts and cars going off the road. The speed limit was lowered to 40 mph on the Massachusetts Turnpike.
The National Weather Service posted a high wind warning for Cape Cod and the Islands, where winds topped 50 mph. School was canceled in many communities and several declared snow emergencies.
About 25,000 NStar customers were without electricity as of 4 p.m., with most of the outages on Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, and in the New Bedford and Plymouth areas, NStar spokeswoman Caroline Allen said. Most of the outages were caused by high winds that knocked down trees and power lines.
National Grid reported about 8,900 customers out, most of them in the South Shore area south of Boston, spokeswoman Deborah Drew said.
Western Massachusetts Electric reported just 100 customers without power in the town of Southwick, southwest of Springfield.
Kathleen Bald of Portland, Ore., who was visiting Providence, R.I., with her family, was among the few who welcomed the storm. Her 2-year-old daughter Maggie ran around a downtown park in pink snow pants and a coat her parents brought from home. Snow is rare in Portland, and Maggie had never played in it before.
"We were praying for snow," Bald said.
Around the corner, Chris Harshman strapped an off-road bicycle to the roof of his Subaru. He was competing in an outdoor race at Roger Williams Park Friday afternoon.
"You got to be very good to make a turn in the snow," Harshman said.
The dreariest weather was reserved for the coast, Foley said. Southern Rhode Island, Cape Cod and the islands reported a mix of rain and freezing rain, while Boston's South Shore saw morning snow, but it turned to rain by late morning.
Though the weather was miserable on Friday, the National Weather Service expected much of the snow to melt during the weekend, when temperatures were forecast in mid-40s."
What a day we've had! I was upstairs typing, and the snow was coming so thick and so hard that the view out every window was plain white...nothing else. No tree branches, no houses...just white! Then lighting struck somewhere, and the loud rumbling thunder afterwards was the longest thunder Paul and I have ever heard...it went on and on and on and on....... forever it seemed. I kept saving my work every few seconds whilst typing so I wouldn't lose it in a power failure. But the power stayed on, miraculously. We had morning snow, we had wind and cold rain (I went out shopping in the wild rain part) and then blinding snow for the rest of the day.
And thunder and lighting. We never got any sun here, but on the news in Natick, MA, they showed the sun poking thru after the storm clouds were moving out.
Thankfully I have my goose-down comforter to sleep underneath tonight... I feel like I'm living in Igloo Cottage tonight.
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