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发帖数: 11530 | 1 Blizzard spreads snowy shroud over nearly half US
By DON BABWIN and MICHAEL TARM, Associated Press Don Babwin And Michael Tarm
, Associated Press
1 min ago
CHICAGO – A fearsome storm spread a smothering shroud of white over nearly
half the nation Wednesday, snarling transportation from Oklahoma to New
England, burying parts of the Midwest under 2 feet of snow and laying down
dangerously heavy layers of ice in the Northeast that were too much for some
buildings to bear.
Tens of millions of people stayed home. The hardy few who ventured out faced
howling winds that turned snowflakes into face-stinging needles. Chicago's
20.2 inches of snow was the city's third-largest amount on record. In New
York's Central Park, the pathways resembled skating rinks.
The storm that resulted from two clashing air masses was, if not
unprecedented, extraordinarily rare for its size and ferocious strength.
"A storm that produces a swath of 20-inch snow is really something we'd see
once every 50 years — maybe," National Weather Service meteorologist Thomas
Spriggs.
Lonely commuters struggled against drifts 3 and 4 feet deep in eerily silent
streets that hadn't seen a plow's blade since the snow started a day
earlier. Parkas and ski goggles normally reserved for the slopes became
essential for getting to work.
"This is probably the most snow I've seen in the last 34 years," joked 34-
year-old Chicagoan Michael George. "I saw some people cross-country skiing
on my way to the train. It was pretty wild."
Although skies were beginning to clear over much of the nation's midsection,
the storm promised to leave a blast of bitter cold in its wake. Overnight
temperatures in the upper Midwest were expected to fall to minus 5 to minus
20, with wind chills as much as minus 30.
The system was blamed for at least 10 deaths, including a homeless man who
burned to death on New York's Long Island as he tried to light cans of
cooking fuel and a woman in Oklahoma City who was killed while being pulled
behind a truck on a sled that hit a guard rail.
Airport operations slowed to a crawl nationwide, and flight cancellations
reached 13,000 for the week, making this system the most disruptive so far
this winter. A massive post-Christmas blizzard led to about 10,000
cancellations.
In the winter-weary Northeast, thick ice caused several structures to
collapse, including a gas station canopy on Long Island and an airplane
hangar near Boston. In at least two places, workers heard the structures
beginning to crack and narrowly escaped.
In Middletown, Conn., the entire third floor of a building failed, littering
the street with bricks and snapping two trees. Acting Fire Marshal Al
Santostefano said two workers fled when they heard a cracking sound.
"It's like a bomb scene," Santostefano said. "Thank God they left the
building when they did."
More than a half-dozen states began digging out from up to a foot of snow
that made roads treacherous and left hundreds of thousands of homes without
power.
Chicago public schools canceled classes for the second straight day. And the
city's iconic Lake Shore Drive remained shut down, nearly a day after
drivers abandoned hundreds of snowbound vehicles.
The famous freeway appeared as if rush hour had been stopped in time, with
three lanes of cars cluttering the pavement amid snow drifts that stood as
high as the windshields. Bulldozers worked to clear the snow from around the
cars, which were then plucked by tow trucks out of the drifts one by one.
Officials could not say when the road would reopen.
As the storm built to full strength Tuesday evening, 26-year-old Lindsey
Wilson sat for hours on a stranded city bus. She eventually joined other
passengers who tried to walk home. She made it about 100 feet before she
couldn't see anything around her, including the bus she'd just left.
Fearing she would be swallowed by mounting snowdrifts, Wilson turned back
and spent the night on the bus.
"I thought if I fall over, what would happen if I got buried under a pile of
snow?" she said.
Some motorists came away angry, frustrated that city didn't close the
crucial thoroughfare earlier. Others were mad at themselves for going out
during the storm or not using another route.
"In 31 years with the city, I haven't experienced anything like we did at
Lake Shore Drive," said Raymond Orozco, chief of staff for Mayor Richard M.
Daley. "Hundreds of people were very inconvenienced, and we apologize for
that."
Elsewhere, utility crews raced to restore power to tens of thousands of
homes and businesses in Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where freezing
rain and ice brought down electrical lines.
Rolling blackouts were implemented across Texas, including in Super Bowl
host city Dallas, due to high demand during a rare ice storm. The outages
would not affect Cowboys Stadium in suburban Arlington, said Jeamy Molina, a
spokeswoman for utility provider Oncor. But other Super Bowl facilities,
such as team hotels, were not exempt, she said.
The storm derived its power from the collision of cold air sweeping down
from Canada and warm, moist air coming up from the south.
"The atmosphere doesn't like that contrast in temperature. Things get mixed
together and you have a storm like this," said Gino Izzo, another weather
service meteorologist. "The jet stream up in the atmosphere was like the
engine and the warm air was the fuel."
The temperature contrasts were most dramatic in Texas earlier in the week
when one part of the state reported temperatures in the single digits and
another part had temperatures in the 70s with near tropical humidity, Izzo
said.
"That was the breeding ground for this storm," he said.
Louis Uccellini, director of the government's National Centers for
Environmental Prediction, said the storm also drew strength from the La Nina
(la NEEN-ya) condition currently affecting the tropical Pacific Ocean.
La Nina is a periodic cooling of the surface temperatures of the tropical
Pacific Ocean, the opposite of the better-known El Nino (el NEEN-yo) warming
. Both can have significant impacts on weather around the world by changing
the movement of winds and high and low pressure systems.
Still, some people in the storm's path shrugged off the weather — and
nearly the whole season.
"It's winter. It should have snow and ice. It's the way it is," said Vincent
Zuza of Chatham, N.J., who was waiting for a flight to Salt Lake City for a
ski trip after his first flight was canceled Wednesday. "You can't get too
upset about it, and you can't control it. You just have to make the best of
it."
For some of those battered by the storm, there was one whimsical ray of hope
an early spring.
Punxsutawney Phil's handlers told Groundhog Day revelers at Gobbler's Knob,
a tiny hill in Punxsutawney, Pa., that the groundhog had not seen his shadow
, meaning winter will end within six weeks, according to tradition. |
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