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Times Square revelry goes on despite snow
Bitterly cold New Year ushered in on the Plains
NEW YORK -- Snow continued to fall late Sunday in upstate New York and northern New England, with the heaviest snow expected in northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. It's the tail end of the blizzard that buried parts of the Northeast under two feet (61 centimeters) of snow one day earlier. Although the snow continues to disrupt holiday travel, it was not heavy enough to keep some 500,000 New Year's Eve revelers from gathering in New York's Time Square. Meanwhile, a new storm moved into the south-central United States, leaving a trail of one to three inches (3 to 8 centimeters) from Dallas to Red River in Texas.
Light snow was expected to fall Sunday night over east central Louisiana and south Mississippi. Accumulations of up to one inch are predicted north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Click here for National Weather Service advisories). Even areas of the United States that escaped snow are just plain cold. Only the Deep South, the Southwest, the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest were forecast to climb above freezing on Sunday. New York: What snow?The Northeast storm was the worst to hit the New York-New Jersey area since the blizzard of January 7-8, 1996, when 20.2 inches (51 centimeters) of snow fell in Central Park in Manhattan, the National Weather Service said. This time, Manhattan got a foot (31 centimeters) of snow -- a record for the date. "We saw people snowboarding in Central Park," said a young Australian woman who came to New York with friends to experience the Times Square revelry. They're among hundreds of thousands of celebrants braving freezing temperatures and a bitterly cold wind chill to welcome in 2001. But it won't be snowy -- at least not in a 16-square-block area around Times Square. As tons of mid-Manhattan snow is trucked away, crews also are using a machine that melts it close to where it fell. Front-loader trucks that scoop up snow from the streets dump it into nearby melting machines. The machines turn the snow into water that pours into storm drains. There continued, however, to be problems at the three major airports in the New York City area, with each airport operating with just one runway, a spokesman for the Port Authority said. The Federal Aviation Administration said arriving flights were delayed from 40 minutes to nearly two hours at LaGuardia Airport and more than three hours at Newark Airport in New Jersey. Both airports also reported some departure delays. (Click here for airport information from the FAA). Delays on arrival and departure were listed as less than 15 minutes at John F. Kennedy Airport. Airlines were running a limited schedule and continued to report numerous cancellations, the Port Authority spokesman said, recommending that travelers call ahead to verify that their flights are leaving as scheduled. Philadelphia: Play ballThe snow also isn't keeping the Philadelphia Eagles from playing their late afternoon playoff game Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Veterans Stadium. Hundreds of city workers removed all traces of Saturday's storm from the stands. As for the Astroturf playing surface, blue tarpaulins and hot-air heaters kept it clear and dry prior to kickoff. However, winds of up to 15 miles an hour forecast for Monday posed a potential threat to the city's annual New Year's Day Mummer's Parade, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The parade features marchers in elaborate and expensive costumes that could be blown by wind gusts. The Mummers Parade is folk art, a flamboyant celebration of the new year that is uniquely Philadelphian. Comic clubs feature clowns, wenches and other characters who satirize contemporary life. Fancy clubs compete in categories including costume and "King Clown." Fancy brigades strut in precision. The string bands don elaborate costumes and play toe-tapping tunes on banjo, saxophone and glockenspiel. The parade is a melding of European traditions. As early as the 1620s, immigrants from Sweden celebrated the new year by visiting friends, shooting guns and banging pots and pans to ward off evil spirits. Later, the British masqueraded door-to-door in a burlesque of ancient "mumming" plays, singing songs and performing short skits in return for food and whiskey. Germans, Italians and Irish added their own traditions. A member of a string band or fancy brigade typically spends $2,000 a year on the hobby, and bands or brigades may shell out $100,000 to go "up the street." Boston spared, but not inland New EnglandThe storm unexpectedly spared Washington before slamming Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey in its northward path. Boston also escaped the brunt of the storm when the snow turned to rain in the evening. It was a different story, though, in inland Massachusetts. Snow totals in western and central Massachusetts are between 6 and 12 inches. Bridgeport, Connecticut, got 9 inches. The storm was a boon for ski area operators in Maine, who had endured several successive years of below-average snowfall. "It's really nice to have winter back -- the way it's supposed to be in New England," said Skip King of Sunday River in Newry. Thousands without power in southern PlainsPower company crews are working around the clock in Arkansas to restore power to some 96,000 homes and businesses that were left in the dark by back-to-back ice storms.
A spokeswoman for Entergy, the state's largest electric provider, said it would be days before some people get their power back on. "Projected restoration time for all customers is January 6, but most customers will be on much sooner," said Yolanda Pollard. A layer of ice up to half an inch (1 centimeter) thick remained on most trees and power lines from the December 25 ice storm that devastated the southern Plains. In Arkansas, 52 counties are under a federal emergency declaration, making residents eligible for immediate federal help with food and shelter. An additional eight counties have been declared disaster areas by the state. Six people have been killed since Christmas in storm-related accidents in Arkansas, said Teri Pfeiffer, a spokeswoman for the state emergency management agency. In northeast Texas, more than 11,700 homes were without power. About 10,000 of those were in Texarkana, where about one-third of the city was without power. Another 70,600 people were without electricity in southeastern Oklahoma. A run on the Ace Hardware store in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, resembled last year's pre-Y2K stockup, "but this is worse," manager Robbie Simpson said. Lanterns, fuel and camping gear all had been snatched from the shelves, and new supplies had not arrived. But Oklahoma officials warned against some alternative heating methods. Carbon monoxide poisoning is suspected in the deaths of two men in Fort Towson who may have been using an improperly vented butane heater. Kelly France, Choctaw County Emergency Management director, noted low shelter attendance and said it's possible that some residents were getting by on generators they bought because of last year's Y2K concerns. But he said many were just making do with whatever they had. "They're tough," he said. CNN National Correspondent Gary Tuchman, Meteorologist Jacqui Jeras, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES: New York bears brunt of East Coast snowstorm RELATED SITES: The Philadelphia Mummers Parade Web Site |
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