Nor’easter
bears down on southern NH
By CAROL
ROBIDOUX
Union Leader Staff
January 23, 2005
A whirling Nor’easter moved its
way up the coast and across New England yesterday, dumping upwards of a foot of
snow across northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.
Travel advisories were posted
long before the snow started falling, with parking bans in place until at least
noon today in cities and towns across the map, including Manchester, Hampton
and Exeter, and until Monday morning in Nashua, where some of the heaviest snow
accumulations in the state were expected.
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State Department of
Transportation road crews were out in full force once the snow started around 3
p.m., stockpiled with salt, sand and a little extra sleep.
“Once they’re out, they’re out,”
said Frank Lowe from the NH-DOT dispatch center in Hooksett. “Probably they’ll
be out there until sometime Sunday night.”
He said it generally takes an hour-and-a-half
to make the rounds in each section. “In the event of really bad blizzard
conditions, I imagine they’ll make a loop, go back to the shed, wait a while,
then go back out,” Lowe said.
Airlines anticipating the worst
began canceling Saturday flights scheduled in and out of Manchester Airport as
early as Friday, leaving some travelers temporarily stranded, said airport
spokesman Brian O’Neill.
By 6 p.m., all but three of the
32 flights scheduled to land before midnight were canceled or delayed,
according to the airport’s Web site, www.flymanchester.com.
“Manchester Airport hasn’t
closed due to weather in 10 years, and we don’t expect to have to close during
this storm, either,” O’Neill said.
He cautioned that anyone
planning to fly today should call the airline directly for the most up-to-date
flight schedules, O’Neill said.
Yes, something wicked snowy this
way came, all right — in the shape of a giant-sized swirling, throbbing blue
comma moving across Doppler Radar screens, causing the National Weather Service
to issue blizzard warnings for parts of northern Maine up through southern and
coastal New Hampshire.
Weather service meteorologist
Butch Roberts called it the perfect shape and size for a perfect storm that has
punctuated an otherwise snow-challenged season.
“It’s a normal winter storm — we
get one of these at least once every year,” said Roberts, from his post at the
Gray, Maine, office.
“But in terms of tracking, this
one’s an 800-pound gorilla. It’s going to go any place it wants,” Roberts said.
In Massachusetts, Gov. Mitt
Romney declared a state of emergency with two feet or more of snow expected in
some parts of the state, along with coastal flooding and near
hurricane-strength winds bringing subzero wind chills.
Romney activated the National
Guard in case coastal areas need to be evacuated. "The snow is falling not
in inches, but in feet," Romney said during a visit to the state highway
department's Lexington depot, where dozens of plows, salters and sanders were
being deployed. "We also have a full moon and that means a tidal surge,
and we expect three to six feet above normal high tide."
At the height of the storm last
night, forecasters expected winds upwards of at least 40 mph across New
Hampshire would cause zero visibility on roadways and drifts of five to six
feet in some places, with snow falling at the rate of three inches per hour.
Exeter meteorologist Ken
Mitchell said the abundant snow was a direct result of the extremely cold
surface temperatures.
“When that happens, the snow
ratio — which is how much snow per inch of water we get, goes as high as
30-to-1. That means, if we get one-inch of water, as the models are projecting,
we will get 30 inches of this light, puffy snow,” Mitchell said.
He said if temperatures were
closer to freezing, snow accumulations might only be about eight inches.
“This is a massive Nor’easter
being fed by a very strong push of cold air, the first of what, more than
likely, won’t be the last significant snowfall,” Mitchell said. “After all,
this is New Hampshire.”
Bob Watson, an official
Weather Service volunteer storm spotter and lifelong weather fanatic, has been
tracking this one from his home-based weather station in Lisbon.
“This is going to be
fantastic,” Watson said. “We’re only expecting a few inches here. But it looks
like southern New Hampshire will get dumped on.”
Watson inherited his love of
wild weather from his grandmother, who kept daily temperature graphs and
regularly measured rainfall until her death three years ago.
Last year Watson, a computer
engineer by day, installed a weather station outside his house. Coupled with
his technical savvy, Watson now posts everything from wind velocity and snow
accumulation to his theory of global warming at his site, www.nhweatherdata.com.
Watson also has a few weather
cams streaming real-time weather conditions, accessible 24-hours a day.
He admits to spending more
time than he probably should on various weather forums at WeatherMatrix.com, a
national forum for amateur weather watchers.
“Oh yeah, I’m totally
addicted to it,” Watson said. “Judging from the number of people I meet in
forums across the country like me who have weather stations and weather cams,
it’s catching on.”
Associated
Press reporting is included in this story.