Easterners fed up with snow
Levels have taxed budgets, patience
HARTFORD, Conn. – In Rhode Island, a mayor tells parents of snowbound schoolchildren to “hang in there.” Atlanta has blown nearly all the money it set aside to clear the streets. In Connecticut, they’re literally praying for winter to end. And at travel agencies, the phones are ringing with callers pining for tropical vacations – when the skies clear up enough to fly out, that is.
Just one month into winter, major cities up and down the East Coast have already gotten clobbered with more snow than they usually get all season, a one-storm-after-another barrage that is eating up snow-removal budgets and forcing schools to close.
And officially, winter still has two months left.
A new half-foot of snow tested the patience of residents in the Hartford area Friday, complicating a morning commute already made arduous by mountainous snowbanks that have not melted since a record-setting snowfall last week. Forecasters are calling for below-zero temperatures in New England over the weekend, followed perhaps by another big snowstorm along the East Coast, maybe even a blizzard.
“I’m spending a lot of time praying for spring,” said Mark Boughton, mayor of Danbury, Conn., where back-to-back storms have been so bruising that crews haven’t even had a chance to take down Christmas lights on Main Street.
More than 55 inches of snow has fallen this season on Hartford, which averages 46 inches in an entire winter. New York, which generally sees about 21 inches per winter, has gotten more than 36. Boston has 50 inches so far, compared with the usual 41.5-inch seasonal total.
Atlanta, which had its first white Christmas in decades, is reeling from about 6 inches so far this season, compared with the usual 0.3 inches for the whole winter.
The culprit is an unpredictable phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation, an interaction of subtropical highs and polar lows that controls the flow of air along the East Coast, said Art DeGaetano, a Cornell University professor who directs the school’s climate center. The colder air turns precipitation that would normally fall as rain into snow – even in the South.