|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
UPDATE: Monday, February 23 4:30 p.m.
With more than 30 inches of snow blanketing the South Coast, Gov. Maura Healey announced a travel ban in Bristol, Plymouth, and Barnstable counties Monday afternoon as emergency responders struggle to navigate roads. New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell requested assistance from the Massachusetts Army National Guard to plow the city.
Healey said the South Coast and Cape Cod travel ban comes as those regions were particularly hard-hit by Monday’s snowstorm. Snowfall totaled as high as 26 inches in Acushnet, according to the National Weather Service, rivaling snowfall experienced during the Blizzard of 1978.
The travel ban applies to all vehicle traffic except emergency and medical vehicles, Healey said at a news conference Monday. Violators will be fined $500.
“We have reports of abandoned and stuck cars on the roads, and tow trucks are having difficulty getting to them,” Healey said.
Mitchell announced on social media Monday afternoon that he had requested “assets” from the National Guard and Department of Transportation to help with plowing and snow removal efforts.
Mitchell’s office did not respond to a list of questions about the city’s blizzard response, including what assets the city specifically requested.
New Bedford Police Department spokesperson Holly Huntoon said the department would respond to questions once the storm is over.
“Local officials are urging residents to stay off the roads as the City responds to one of the largest snowstorms ever recorded,” the city shared in a statement. “More than 30 inches of snow fell on New Bedford by Monday afternoon, with snow expected to last into the evening.”
South Coast residents woke up to as much as 2 feet of snow Monday morning, with up to 12 more inches expected throughout the day in some locations.
The blizzard arrived gradually around 9 p.m. Sunday before picking up in the wee hours of the morning, heaving down 2 to 4 inches of snow per hour during its peak.
According to National Weather Service counts, New Bedford’s Bliss Corner received 24 inches of snow by 9 a.m. Monday, although other parts of the South Coast received between 9 and 19 inches. Although the snowfall had slowed by late Monday morning, forecasts expect New Bedford to receive up to 3 feet of the fluffy white stuff before the day’s end.
“What you see is what you get,” National Weather Service meteorologist Candice Hrencecin told the Light in a phone call Monday. “It’s going to be pretty miserable for the rest of the day today, but it should be clearing out tonight.”
New Bedford had the unique pleasure of being at the epicenter of this week’s storm, which is technically a mid-latitude cyclone or a very strong low-pressure system, Hrencecin said.
“It’s just on the southeast part of what we call the benchmark, 40º north latitude and 70º longitude, which is a big indicator that we use for impact,” she said. “Because of where that is, New Bedford is just getting slammed.”
The 40/70 point, as it’s sometimes called, is a geographic point in the ocean, about 80 miles south of Nantucket, that meteorologists use to determine whether New England is going to be hit with heavy snowfall. If the storm tracks by that point, snowfall is more than likely.
Unlike the Gulf Coast or Pacific regions, which are shaped heavily by El Niño and La Niña years, Hrencecin said New England is most affected by the North Atlantic Oscillation, a pressure pattern that controls the strength and direction of the Atlantic’s westerly winds. The North Atlantic Oscillation shifts about once every few months and is currently in a negative phase, which means a slower jet stream and increased cold-air outbreaks that can lead to winter storms.
Meteorologists had been tracking the storm for about a week, Hrencecin said, but weren’t sure of its exact trajectory until a few days ago. The low-pressure system formed in the Atlantic before undergoing a “bombogenesis” when the pressure dropped very suddenly.
“It’s just a fancy way of saying it got really, really strong, really really fast,” Hrencecin said.
By Monday morning, New Bedford residents had already reported at least one fallen, sparking power line. The City of New Bedford encourages residents to report potentially live wires to 911 and fallen trees to 311.
Winds reached 62 mph in New Bedford on Monday morning, according to the National Weather Service.
In anticipation of wind speeds up to 50 mph and gusts of up to 70 mph, Massachusetts utility company Eversource stationed 67 contractors in New Bedford and hundreds of linemen around the state to fix potential power outages due to fallen trees.
As of 4:17 p.m. Monday, Eversource’s outage tracker reported 4,984 New Bedford customers affected by outages, or roughly 10% of the city’s total customers. Areas of the Cape and South Shore were hit the hardest, with some towns reporting over 90% of customers affected.
“This storm is different because it is expected to be slow-moving and long-duration, with blizzard conditions that can make damage harder to assess and restoration more complex once the storm subsides,” Eversource External Communications manager Olessa Stepanova said in an email.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell urged residents at a news conference Sunday to be patient. He anticipated that high winds and heavy snowfall would make plowing difficult and in some cases impossible, with the snow whipping back onto the ground as soon as it’s plowed.
In a Facebook post Monday, Ward 1 City Councilor Leo Choquette warned residents that both County Street and Union Street, two of the city’s main arteries, were not passable due to snow. Medic units instead had to travel on foot downtown through 5-foot snow drifts, Choquette posted.
The city implemented a street parking ban Sunday afternoon that is expected to continue “until further notice,” city spokesperson Jonathan Darling said in a phone call. City offices, schools, and libraries will remain closed Tuesday, and trash pickup will be delayed one more day.
This year’s especially active storm season has taken the city “way over budget” on storm preparations like plowing and road salt, Mitchell said Sunday, given that it had been nearly a decade since the city had seen a major snow event.
New Bedford got 12 inches of snow this January 25-26. That storm and this one make this the most intense winter in Massachusetts since 2015’s record-breaking “Snowmageddon.”
The city’s chief financial officer, Robert Ekstrom, said in a statement Sunday that the city had spent approximately $535,000 on snow removal thus far, and expects the tab to continue to run up before springtime. The city had originally budgeted just $300,000 for snow removal, after the City Council cut $150,000 from the mayor’s proposed budget item, Ekstrom added.
With a deficit of $235,000, the city will have to transfer some money from its rainy-day fund to cover snow removal costs. Mitchell added that in declaring a state of emergency Sunday, he hoped some of the city’s expenses could be reimbursed by the federal government.
“I just ask for people’s patience,” Mitchell said Sunday. “This is going to be a multi-day effort.”
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.
More stories by Brooke Kushwaha
Keep The Light shining with your donation.
As an independent, nonprofit news outlet, we rely on reader support to help fund the kind of in-depth journalism that keeps the public informed and holds the powerful accountable. Thank you for your support.
Now this is a storm in comparison to the blizzard of 78. Not that January storm that was nothing in comparison. Do not travel means do not travel. School department custodians are not snow plow drivers. Clearing a school during a blizzard is asinine. Custodians should not be forced to work, they are not a doctor, medical, food delivery, police, fire. No travel means NO TRAVEL!