Photos reveal nor'easter's beauty, destruction, and slop along the East Coast
The second powerful nor'easter in less than a week lived up to expectations, and then some, from the Philadelphia area northward into New York and Boston. A slow-moving, narrow band of heavy snow parked itself over northern New Jersey for much of the day on Wednesday, dumping snow at 2 to 4 inches per hour.
While New York City only managed to pick up 2.9 inches of snow in Central Park, areas just 20 miles outside of the city had up to 2 feet of heavy, wet snow accumulate. All night long, residents of the suburbs of these three cities reported snapping sounds from tree branches, as well as power transformer explosions, as the wet of the snow proved too much for many trees and power lines.
As was predicted, the storm was an unusually prolific thundersnow producer, particularly in the New York City area, where lightning flashes and booming rumbles of thunder were noted during the entire day on Wednesday.
In fact, according to Kathryn Prociv, a meteorologist and producer at The Weather Channel, more than 1,500 lightning strikes were observed on Wednesday, including the thundersnow and lightning in offshore storms that were occurring in a milder part of the storm.
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Here are some scenes of the storm from some of the hardest-hit areas.
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Kinnelon, New Jersey picked up an impressive 31 inches of snow, and Woodford, Vermont got 36 inches of snow dumped on it, the most for any state in the path of this storm, according to the National Weather Service.
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There is the potential for yet another storm to form along the East Coast on Sunday and Monday, possibly affecting the New York area, but the weather pattern for that storm looks somewhat different from the one that impacted the region this week.
After that, people in the Northeast should be able to breathe a sigh of relief. The weekend storm should be the end of this remarkable string of stormy weather.
Andrew Freedman is Mashable's Senior Editor for Science and Special Projects. Prior to working at Mashable, Freedman was a Senior Science writer for Climate Central. He has also worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Greenwire/E&E Daily. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, online at The Weather Channel, and washingtonpost.com, where he wrote a weekly climate science column for the "Capital Weather Gang" blog. He has provided commentary on climate science and policy for Sky News, CBC Radio, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sirius XM Radio, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international outlets. He holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University, and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
