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Nor'easter Adds Fear To Misery In N.Y. And N.J.

Snow and high winds blew into the New York-New Jersey region Wednesday. Things were getting messy here, in Manhattan's Union Square.
John Moore
/
Getty Images
Snow and high winds blew into the New York-New Jersey region Wednesday. Things were getting messy here, in Manhattan's Union Square.

Still struggling to recover from Superstorm Sandy, parts of New Jersey, New York City and surrounding regions are today digging out from a Nor'easter that dropped several inches of snow (more in some places) and caused more power outages.

The snow this morning in Manhattan's Central Park, where several inches fell.
Margot Adler / NPR
/
NPR
The snow this morning in Manhattan's Central Park, where several inches fell.

We're following the news about the impact of the latest storm.

Update at noon, ET. Getting The Power Back On In New Jersey:

"About 40,000 [customers] remain without lights because of hurricane-speed wind gusts, driving rain and heavy, wet snow that descended on the region Wednesday," The Star-Ledger reports. Across the northern part of New Jersey and along the coast, "about 110,000 are awaiting to get their power restored, including 70,000 whose power was knocked out due to Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath."

As The New York Times' City Room blog says:

"Wednesday's northeaster might not have brought the flooding that was predicted, but thanks to up to a foot of heavy, wet snow and stiff winds, it still knocked out power to at least 375,000 homes in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, utility companies said, dealing a setback to the region's slow recovery from Hurricane Sandy.

"But utility companies said that their crews — supplemented by thousands of reinforcements from across the country — were working quickly and had already restored power to many or most of their customers that lost it yesterday."

Our original post, from 7 a.m. ET:

"Nine days after Hurricane Sandy transformed the state, destroying coastal defenses and shattering the power grid," a Nor'easter has "heaped fresh hardship and fear atop lingering misery," New Jersey's Star-Ledger writes.

As promised, The Associated Press says, the storm "brought gusting winds, rain, snow and the threat of flooding ... menaced travelers with icy roads, snarled the Long Island Rail Road and knocked out power to people who had only recently gotten it back."

In short, it added "insult to injury," NPR's Martin Kaste said earlier on Morning Edition.

Martin Kaste on 'Morning Editon'

According to The New York Times:

"The storm, which covered cars and trees in the region in a coat of white, brought down power lines faster than repair crews could keep up, and fierce winds and blowing snow threatened to drive the crews off the job. By about 5 p.m. [Wednesday], the northeaster had knocked out electricity to roughly 13,000 Consolidated Edison customers. All told, about 77,000 Con Edison customers had no power on Wednesday evening, up from about 64,000 earlier in the day, according to the company's Web site.

"The numbers also went up on Long Island. The Long Island Power Authority began the day saying that 184,000 customers still lacked power. By day's end, the total was 199,000.

"About 151,000 Public Service Electric and Gas customers in New Jersey had no power before the new storm arrived. The company said the storm caused an additional 90,000 power failures statewide."

There is, thankfully, good news about what's expected in coming days. Temperatures are expected to rise into the 60s this weekend in the region.

Our colleagues at WNYC continue to track the storm with this radar map.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.