Sun Jan 24, 2016 | 1:59 PM EST
9:55 AM EST | 00:48
The big dig out begins
By Frank McGurty and Ian Simpson
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York lifted a travel ban and mass transit started getting back to normal on Sunday after a record-setting blizzard in the U.S. Northeast, but Washington remained at a standstill following storms that killed at least 19 people across the country.
The blizzard was the second-biggest snowstorm in New York City history, with 26.8 inches (68 cm) of snow in Central Park by midnight on Saturday, just shy of the record 26.9 inches (68 cm) set in 2006, the National Weather Service said.
Thirteen people were killed in weather-related car crashes in Arkansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia on Saturday. One person died in Maryland and three in New York while shoveling snow. Two died of hypothermia in Virginia, officials said.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday would be a major cleanup day. He urged residents to stay off streets so city crews could clear roads.
“The snow pile is going to be with us for a while, but I think we'll be in good shape in the next 24 hours," he said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous."
After the storm moved out into the Atlantic Ocean, much of the Northeast was expected to see a mix of sun and clouds on Sunday with temperatures just above freezing.
New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo lifted a travel ban on New York City-area roads and on Long Island at 7 a.m. (1200 GMT) on Sunday. A state of emergency declared by Cuomo was still in place.
Most bus and subway services operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were up and running again by 9 a.m. (1400 GMT), officials said. The agency was working on restoring full service on Sunday.
The Metro-North rail line, which serves suburbs north and east of New York City, expected to have commuter train service running into and out of New York by 3 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Sunday.
A spokeswoman for the New York Stock Exchange said the market planned to open as usual on Monday. City schools also were set to open on Monday.
The New York Sanitation Department had plowed all streets at least once, and was focusing on Sunday on secondary and side streets, the mayor's office said in a statement.
The city was deploying more than 2,300 pieces of snow-clearing equipment and keeping sanitation workers on 12-hour shifts, it said.
RECORDS SET
The National Weather Service said 17.8 inches (45.2 cm) fell in Washington, and Baltimore-Washington International Airport notched a record 29.2 inches (74.2 cm). The deepest regional total was 42 inches (106.7 cm) at Glengarry, West Virginia.
Peter Hoeppe, head of reinsurer Munich Re's Geo Risks research unit, said in a statement that it was too early to estimate possible losses from the storm.
Washington was a dazzling white under a bright sun, and walkers, sledders, some cars and the occasional cross-country skier were out on Sunday.
Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a call for 4,000 people to help dig the city out, above the 2,000 volunteers already signed up.
The House of Representatives canceled its voting until Feb. 1.
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had suspended operations through Sunday. Public schools were closed on Monday across much of the Washington and Baltimore region, with some shuttered through Tuesday.
One Washington food store, Broad Branch Market, opened with a handful of employees, and was trying to organize volunteers to shovel the sidewalks of the elderly and others who needed help.
“I have a lot of people on the list (who want shoveling) but I have yet to have any kids sign up to work today,” said the owner, Tracy Stannard.
The market is out of firewood, snowmelt chemical and bread - but is baking baguettes, she said. A snow plow stuck on a nearby street late on Saturday was still there on Sunday.
At Dupont Circle, hundreds of people gathered to pelt each other with snowballs. Jomel Nichols, a tourist from Kansas City, Missouri, accompanying three exchange students and her daughter, was plastered with snow.
"They all turned on me, as teenagers will do," she told Reuters Television.
FLIGHTS CANCELED
About 3,500 flights were canceled on Sunday, and 700 were called off for Monday, according to aviation website FlightAware.com.
Among New York-area airports, John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty and LaGuardia were open, with limited flight activity expected on Sunday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.
About 150,000 customers in North Carolina and 90,000 in New Jersey lost electricity during the storm.
More than 20,000 residential and business customers in New Jersey remained without power on Sunday, mostly along the Jersey Shore, which was hit with major flooding..
In North Carolina, about 4,000 Duke Energy customers had no power on Sunday, mostly in the eastern part of the state.
On Sunday, moderate coastal flooding was still a concern in the Jersey Shore's Atlantic County, said Linda Gilmore, a county public information officer.
The storm developed along the Gulf Coast when warm, moist air from the Atlantic Ocean collided with cold air to form the massive winter system, meteorologists said.
(Additional reporting by Lisa Lambert, David Gaffen and Susan Cornwell; Writing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool; Editing by Andrew Bolton and Jonathan Oatis)
Showing posts with label Tennessee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tennessee. Show all posts
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Tennessee mosque opens after fight, with message of forgiveness
Friday, March 02, 2012
Tornadoes kill at least 27 in Midwest, South
Sat, Mar 03 01:53 AM EST
image
1 of 4
By Susan Guyett
INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Powerful tornadoes raked across a wide swath of the U.S. Midwest and South on Friday, killing at least 27 people in three states and bringing the death toll to at least 40 from a week of deadly late-winter storms.
The twisters splintered homes, damaged a prison and tossed around vehicles across the region, leaving at least 13 people dead in southern Indiana, another 12 in neighboring Kentucky and two more in Ohio, officials said. In all, the latest line of storms battered a band of states from Ohio and Indiana on southward to Alabama.
"We are no match for Mother Nature at her worst," Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels said in a statement, adding that he would visit the stricken southeast corner of the state on Saturday.
Another possible storm-related death occurred in Henryville, Indiana, where television images showed homes blown apart.
Televised video taken from the air showed rescue workers in Indiana picking through one splintered house, residents sifting through the ruins of a home, and a school bus thrown into a building. Several warehouse-like structures had their roofs ripped off.
Major Chuck Adams of the sheriff's office in Indiana's Clark County said there was extensive damage to a school in Henryville but said: "All the children are out. No injuries to any of them, just minor scrapes and abrasions."
An Indiana official confirmed 13 deaths from the tornadoes on Friday, in four southeastern counties. A spokesman for Kentucky's Department of Public Health reported a statewide death toll of 12, while Ohio officials said there were two deaths in a single county.
"There's a possibility we could have additional fatalities," in southwestern Ohio said Kathy Lehr, the director of public information in Clermont County.
The Ohio victims were a 54-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman who was a city council member in the town of Moscow, Lehr said. Many homes in the county had suffered damage, including some in which buildings were swept off their foundations.
Storm warnings were issued throughout the day from the Midwest to the Southeast, and schools and businesses were closed ahead of the storms after a series of tornadoes earlier in the week killed 13 people in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee.
"We may not be done yet," said John Hart, a meteorologist at the Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
As night fell and temperatures cooled, the line of storms appeared to weaken somewhat as they traveled eastward, but the National Weather Service warned of another possible outbreak of tornadic weather in Saturday's early hours.
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes were likely over an area stretching from Indiana and Ohio into Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.
This week's violent storms raised fears that 2012 will be another bad year for tornadoes after 550 deaths in the United States were blamed on twisters last year, the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the Weather Service.
The highest death tolls were from an April outbreak in Alabama and Mississippi that claimed 364 lives, and from a May tornado in Joplin, Missouri, that killed 161 people. There were two tornado-related deaths earlier this year in Alabama.
STRUCK FOR SECOND YEAR
Alabama's Madison County, which was struck by a tornado during last April's deadly outbreak, was hit again on Friday by a tornado that took a similar path. An emergency management official said seven people had been transported to hospitals.
"There were two storms that moved across the area, very close together, almost attached to each other," National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Darden said. The Weather service said the damage was from an EF-2 tornado with winds of 120 miles per hour that took a similar path to a devastating tornado on April 27, 2011.
Authorities said 40 homes were destroyed and 150 damaged in two northern Alabama counties on Friday.
A prison, Limestone Correctional Facility, was in the path of the storm, Alabama officials said. High winds caused roof damage to two dormitories, forcing 300 inmates to be moved to elsewhere in the facility.
No one was seriously injured at the prison and there were no risks of prisoners escaping, though there was damage to some perimeter fencing and a canteen, said Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections.
Multiple tornadoes also struck Tennessee and along the Ohio River valley in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.
In Kentucky, a small trailer park, a fire station and a few homes in Trimble County were destroyed by suspected tornadoes about 40 miles northwest of Louisville, the Kentucky State Police said. The fire house and trailer park in Milton "were down to the ground," said the state police's Kevin Woosley.
Nashville was pounded by rain and hail, and suspected tornadoes struck twice, hours apart, in eastern Tennessee near Chattanooga. Among the places hit was the valley below historic Lookout Mountain.
"We've had 29 injuries in the state, but no fatalities," said Dean Flener of the Tennessee emergency management agency.
Storm damage to transmission lines in Tennessee forced operators to reduce the output of the Tennessee Valley Authority's 1,126-megawatt Unit 2 at the Sequoyah nuclear plant to 70 percent from full power, a spokeswoman said.
More than 57,000 customers served by providers in the TVA service area were without power in north Alabama, western Kentucky and southeast Tennessee, the power supplier said.
High winds downed power lines in the Atlanta area, pitching more than a thousand homes into darkness, and officials warned residents about torn lines becoming entangled in trees.
(Reporting By Bruce Olson, Verna Gates, Tim Ghianni, Peggy Gargis, David Bailey, James Kelleher, Joe Wessels, Susan Guyett, Lee Mueller, Ivonne Rovira and Dan Whitcomb, Tim Gaynor and Cynthia Johnston; Writing by Andrew Stern; Editing by Dan Burns and Eric Walsh)
========
INSURANCE LOSSES
The band of tornadoes, with at least several dozen sightings and touchdowns, has already been compared to the "Super Outbreak" of twisters of April 1974, one of the largest and most violent in the United States.
Friday's storms came less than a year after a series of tornadoes caused some of the worst insured losses in U.S. history, and the insurance industry is likely facing substantial costs again..
An Indiana official confirmed 14 deaths from the tornadoes on Friday, in four southeastern counties. A spokeswoman for the Kentucky governor reported a statewide death toll of 18, while Ohio officials said there were three deaths in a single county.
In Georgia, an 83-year-old woman was found dead near a drainage pipe after she wandered from her home in severe weather on Friday, possibly to seek better shelter. A public safety official said she may have died after water rose in the pipe.
Storm warnings had been issued throughout the day on Friday from the Midwest to the Southeast, and schools and businesses were closed ahead of the storms after the series of tornadoes earlier in the week that killed 13 people in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee.
This week's violent storms raised fears that 2012 will be another bad year for tornadoes after 550 deaths in the United States were blamed on twisters last year, the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the National Weather Service.
The highest death tolls were from an outbreak last April in Alabama and Mississippi that claimed 364 lives, and from a May tornado in Joplin, Missouri, that killed 161 people.
Authorities said 40 homes were destroyed and 150 damaged in two northern Alabama counties on Friday. One person died in a home in Tallapoosa County, according to Joe Paul Boone, the director of the local Emergency Management Agency.
Alabama officials said a prison, Limestone Correctional Facility, sustained roof damage to two dormitories, forcing 300 inmates to be moved to elsewhere in the facility.
No one was seriously injured at the prison and there were no risks of prisoners escaping, though there was damage to some perimeter fencing and a canteen, said Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections.
Multiple tornadoes also struck Tennessee and along the Ohio River valley in Illinois.
(Additonal reporting by David Adams, Tom Brown, Ian Simpson, Karen Brooks and John Stoll; Writing by Tom Brown and Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Peter Bohan)
===============
image
1 of 4
By Susan Guyett
INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Powerful tornadoes raked across a wide swath of the U.S. Midwest and South on Friday, killing at least 27 people in three states and bringing the death toll to at least 40 from a week of deadly late-winter storms.
The twisters splintered homes, damaged a prison and tossed around vehicles across the region, leaving at least 13 people dead in southern Indiana, another 12 in neighboring Kentucky and two more in Ohio, officials said. In all, the latest line of storms battered a band of states from Ohio and Indiana on southward to Alabama.
"We are no match for Mother Nature at her worst," Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels said in a statement, adding that he would visit the stricken southeast corner of the state on Saturday.
Another possible storm-related death occurred in Henryville, Indiana, where television images showed homes blown apart.
Televised video taken from the air showed rescue workers in Indiana picking through one splintered house, residents sifting through the ruins of a home, and a school bus thrown into a building. Several warehouse-like structures had their roofs ripped off.
Major Chuck Adams of the sheriff's office in Indiana's Clark County said there was extensive damage to a school in Henryville but said: "All the children are out. No injuries to any of them, just minor scrapes and abrasions."
An Indiana official confirmed 13 deaths from the tornadoes on Friday, in four southeastern counties. A spokesman for Kentucky's Department of Public Health reported a statewide death toll of 12, while Ohio officials said there were two deaths in a single county.
"There's a possibility we could have additional fatalities," in southwestern Ohio said Kathy Lehr, the director of public information in Clermont County.
The Ohio victims were a 54-year-old man and a 64-year-old woman who was a city council member in the town of Moscow, Lehr said. Many homes in the county had suffered damage, including some in which buildings were swept off their foundations.
Storm warnings were issued throughout the day from the Midwest to the Southeast, and schools and businesses were closed ahead of the storms after a series of tornadoes earlier in the week killed 13 people in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee.
"We may not be done yet," said John Hart, a meteorologist at the Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
As night fell and temperatures cooled, the line of storms appeared to weaken somewhat as they traveled eastward, but the National Weather Service warned of another possible outbreak of tornadic weather in Saturday's early hours.
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes were likely over an area stretching from Indiana and Ohio into Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.
This week's violent storms raised fears that 2012 will be another bad year for tornadoes after 550 deaths in the United States were blamed on twisters last year, the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the Weather Service.
The highest death tolls were from an April outbreak in Alabama and Mississippi that claimed 364 lives, and from a May tornado in Joplin, Missouri, that killed 161 people. There were two tornado-related deaths earlier this year in Alabama.
STRUCK FOR SECOND YEAR
Alabama's Madison County, which was struck by a tornado during last April's deadly outbreak, was hit again on Friday by a tornado that took a similar path. An emergency management official said seven people had been transported to hospitals.
"There were two storms that moved across the area, very close together, almost attached to each other," National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Darden said. The Weather service said the damage was from an EF-2 tornado with winds of 120 miles per hour that took a similar path to a devastating tornado on April 27, 2011.
Authorities said 40 homes were destroyed and 150 damaged in two northern Alabama counties on Friday.
A prison, Limestone Correctional Facility, was in the path of the storm, Alabama officials said. High winds caused roof damage to two dormitories, forcing 300 inmates to be moved to elsewhere in the facility.
No one was seriously injured at the prison and there were no risks of prisoners escaping, though there was damage to some perimeter fencing and a canteen, said Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections.
Multiple tornadoes also struck Tennessee and along the Ohio River valley in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.
In Kentucky, a small trailer park, a fire station and a few homes in Trimble County were destroyed by suspected tornadoes about 40 miles northwest of Louisville, the Kentucky State Police said. The fire house and trailer park in Milton "were down to the ground," said the state police's Kevin Woosley.
Nashville was pounded by rain and hail, and suspected tornadoes struck twice, hours apart, in eastern Tennessee near Chattanooga. Among the places hit was the valley below historic Lookout Mountain.
"We've had 29 injuries in the state, but no fatalities," said Dean Flener of the Tennessee emergency management agency.
Storm damage to transmission lines in Tennessee forced operators to reduce the output of the Tennessee Valley Authority's 1,126-megawatt Unit 2 at the Sequoyah nuclear plant to 70 percent from full power, a spokeswoman said.
More than 57,000 customers served by providers in the TVA service area were without power in north Alabama, western Kentucky and southeast Tennessee, the power supplier said.
High winds downed power lines in the Atlanta area, pitching more than a thousand homes into darkness, and officials warned residents about torn lines becoming entangled in trees.
(Reporting By Bruce Olson, Verna Gates, Tim Ghianni, Peggy Gargis, David Bailey, James Kelleher, Joe Wessels, Susan Guyett, Lee Mueller, Ivonne Rovira and Dan Whitcomb, Tim Gaynor and Cynthia Johnston; Writing by Andrew Stern; Editing by Dan Burns and Eric Walsh)
========
INSURANCE LOSSES
The band of tornadoes, with at least several dozen sightings and touchdowns, has already been compared to the "Super Outbreak" of twisters of April 1974, one of the largest and most violent in the United States.
Friday's storms came less than a year after a series of tornadoes caused some of the worst insured losses in U.S. history, and the insurance industry is likely facing substantial costs again..
An Indiana official confirmed 14 deaths from the tornadoes on Friday, in four southeastern counties. A spokeswoman for the Kentucky governor reported a statewide death toll of 18, while Ohio officials said there were three deaths in a single county.
In Georgia, an 83-year-old woman was found dead near a drainage pipe after she wandered from her home in severe weather on Friday, possibly to seek better shelter. A public safety official said she may have died after water rose in the pipe.
Storm warnings had been issued throughout the day on Friday from the Midwest to the Southeast, and schools and businesses were closed ahead of the storms after the series of tornadoes earlier in the week that killed 13 people in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee.
This week's violent storms raised fears that 2012 will be another bad year for tornadoes after 550 deaths in the United States were blamed on twisters last year, the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the National Weather Service.
The highest death tolls were from an outbreak last April in Alabama and Mississippi that claimed 364 lives, and from a May tornado in Joplin, Missouri, that killed 161 people.
Authorities said 40 homes were destroyed and 150 damaged in two northern Alabama counties on Friday. One person died in a home in Tallapoosa County, according to Joe Paul Boone, the director of the local Emergency Management Agency.
Alabama officials said a prison, Limestone Correctional Facility, sustained roof damage to two dormitories, forcing 300 inmates to be moved to elsewhere in the facility.
No one was seriously injured at the prison and there were no risks of prisoners escaping, though there was damage to some perimeter fencing and a canteen, said Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections.
Multiple tornadoes also struck Tennessee and along the Ohio River valley in Illinois.
(Additonal reporting by David Adams, Tom Brown, Ian Simpson, Karen Brooks and John Stoll; Writing by Tom Brown and Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Peter Bohan)
===============
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