It was a storm of record consequence, disrupting large swaths of the Northeast in ways large and small: towns were buried in dense snowfalls, closing down streets, schools and even, in some cases, Halloween celebrations.þþþBy the time the great snowstorm of October 2011 finally ended early Sunday, more than three million customers would find themselves without power and with the prospect of enduring several more days without it. In many communities, the storm had a far greater impact on daily life than did Tropical Storm Irene.þþPeople emptied stores of generators and chain saws and flocked to town halls to charge phones on emergency power. The chilled and the hungry drove miles looking for a cup of coffee, or for barbecued meat inexorably defrosting in powerless freezers. In Worcester, Mass., a wedding with cranberry dresses and flowers the colors of fall foliage ended up soggy and white. In Glen Rock, N.J., orderly suburban blocks became a maze, with fallen branches draped across nearly every street.þþAt least nine deaths were attributed to the storm, including that of a 20-year-old man electrocuted by a downed power line in Springfield, Mass.þþCommunities in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire expected schools to remain closed for several days as they cleaned up downed electrical wires and fallen branches. And in Central Park, as many as 1,000 trees may be lost — eight times the damage suffered after Tropical Storm Irene.þþBut in the most telling sign of how the snow had turned seasons topsy-turvy — throwing an icy and sometimes lethal blanket over trees whose leaves were often still green — the storm threatened to obliterate Halloween.þþIn Hollis, N.H., officials held an urgent meeting at the town hall, where, unlike at their homes, there was heat, hot water and flushing toilets. The emergency management director, Don McCoy, gave them the bad news: He was canceling Halloween until next year.þþIt was too dangerous, he said, for children to meander through total darkness, live wires and fallen branches, and there was no way to know how soon it would be safe.þþLater, he relented, declaring trick-or-treating merely postponed, until Nov. 5, following the lead of the nearby town of Brookline.þþ“Things should be a little better then, and we hate to disappoint all the kiddies who went out and bought costumes,” Mr. McCoy said.þþIn Worcester, officials asked people not to trick-or-treat until Thursday; in New Canaan, Conn., a Halloween parade was canceled; and in New Jersey, town governments issued 5 p.m. curfews — effectively banning trick-or-treating — by sending text messages to residents on their phones.þþ“I told my kids we’re not having a white Christmas; we’re having a white Halloween,” said Maria Ponce, 32, of Port Chester, N.Y. “They’ll have to wear boots to trick-or-treat.”þþIn New York City, though the storm was less severe, the threat to Halloween reared its head on Saturday during early Halloween events, as children cast off bumblebee antennas in favor of warm hats and hid superhero outfits under coats.þþThe storm swept harder across parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, upstate New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine, setting records in some places both for snowfall and power failures.þþPlainfield, Mass., received 30.8 inches of snow; West Milford, N.J., got 31.4; and Jaffrey, N.H., had 31.4, according to the National Weather Service.þþMore than 12 inches fell at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Conn. The previous record for the day was less than a tenth of an inch, in 2000, the Weather Service said.þþGovernors in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut declared states of emergency. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York declared an emergency in 13 counties.þþAccording to state governments and utilities, at least three million customers lost power. More than 400,000 customers lost power across New York State at the storm’s peak, and most remained without electricity at midday Sunday, with the greatest damage in Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange Counties. Power failures hit 650,000 customers in Massachusetts, 10,000 in Rhode Island, 280,000 in New Hampshire, more than 400,000 in Pennsylvania and about 500,000 in New Jersey.þþGov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut said more than 750,000 homes in the state were without power, breaking a record set in August when the remnants of the tropical storm passed through.þþPeople trudging through stores in search of sold-out supplies had little time to meditate on climate change. They talked more about how recent storms — the ice storm of 2008 in New Hampshire and Tropical Storm Irene in New Jersey — had prompted them to buy generators and left them better prepared.þþBut scholars began marshaling their arguments to remind people that single storms, no matter how dramatic, say little about overall climate patterns.þþRobert Stavin, an economist at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said a surprise winter storm no more disproved climate change than a hot day in August proved it.þþBut larger patterns of extreme storms and precipitation, even if accompanied by cold snaps, support the theory of global warming, he and several climate researchers said, because warming oceans are sending more moisture into the air.þþThe storm may be a death knell for apple-picking season at Hager Brothers’ small orchard in Shelburne Falls, Mass.þþWith temperatures expected in the teens, “that’ll probably be the end of what we can pick off our trees,” said Bethany Miles, who was working at the orchard store.þþThe wedding of Christine and Ryan Hubbard on Saturday night in Worcester — with pumpkins and flowers in warm, deep colors — was aiming for a crisp autumn look but ended up with an aesthetic that was more frigid slush.þþ“If somebody looks at our wedding pictures, they’re going to think that we got married in December,” Ms. Hubbard said.þþTo the north, the lights went out on Saturday night as Ryan Thibeault of Hollis, N.H., blew out the 16 candles on his birthday cake. Ryan’s mother, Pauline, found mittens for the partygoers, and everyone made do, figuring the darkness made for a seasonally spooky setting. “We sat in the hall in the dark laughing and ate cold pizza by candlelight,” she said.þþShe was less amused on Sunday morning, when, bundled up in a parka, she trekked 25 yards through the snow to a lake to fill a bucket. The water was needed to flush the toilets.þþMore threatening problems were downed wires and precariously hanging branches.þþIn Sherman, Conn., Jerry Ryan, a lead electrician for Connecticut Light and Power, was working to restore equipment damaged by a tree, using a hand-held voltage detector that lights up if a wire is live.þþ“The whole town of Sherman is shut down,” he said. “This beats out Hurricane Irene big time. It’s 10 times worse.”þþKathy Johansen, working at Woodbury Pewter in Woodbury, Conn., said she had a scare when she was stuck in the snow. Just as a passing snowplow driver was scooping out an escape route, a giant tree crashed within inches of her car.þþ“I would have been crushed completely,” she said. “And you’ll never guess the name of the road: Transylvania Road.”
Source: NY Times
