Tag Archives: East Coast

After weird winter, U.S. forecasters see warm, wet spring

A couple embraces in front of an ice-covered fountain in Bryant Park in New York City, U.S.

By Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – If you liked the balmy weather that dominated on the U.S. East Coast and much of the South this winter, you will probably enjoy the spring of 2017, too.

The new season, which officially begins on Monday, should bring more of the same in both regions, forecasters say, though for the East, a final twist of winter weirdness will have to play out before the region basks in the warmth again.

Spring, which starts with the vernal equinox at 6:28 a.m. EDT on Monday, will begin warmly but Wednesday’s temperatures are predicted to plunge into the 20s (-1 to -6 Celsius) and teens in the U.S. Northeast, with a snowstorm possible in the Midwest, according to Accuweather.com.

After the warmest February on record in New York City and other parts of the Northeast, winter returned with a vengeance last week with a paralyzing snowstorm and sustained stretch of sub-freezing temperatures.

“That was our three days of winter,” said Jon Gottschalck, chief forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In New York, where pedestrians are still navigating deep piles of snow and ice, the mercury was expected to dip below the freezing mark overnight and then climb to about 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) on the first day of spring.

“Hang tight, bear with it, because our forecast for spring is above-average temperatures,” Gottschalck said.

That may come as cold comfort for the nation’s capital. Last week’s cold snap annihilated half of the pink-and-white cherry blossoms that typically draw 1.5 million tourists to Washington in early April. Lured to an early bloom by historic warmth, they were dangerously exposed, said National Park Service officials, who soldiered on with a festival celebrating survivors expected to reach peak bloom around March 25.

While the East Coast luxuriated in the mild temperatures, and Texas and Louisiana had the warmest winter in more than a century, the West Coast enjoyed a welcome stretch of wet weather after years of drought.

Nevada and Wyoming set records for precipitation, while California had the second wettest winter in the 123 years of record-keeping, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.

Temperatures for April, May and June were expected to be above normal in the Southern Plains, lower Mississippi Valley and the East Coast, said NOAA meteorologist Dan Petersen. For the West Coast, the long-range forecast was still unclear.

But NOAA is calling for a wetter-than-normal spring on the Gulf Coast and in the Northern Plains, where above-average snowfall in North Dakota and Idaho could trigger flooding.

On the final day of winter, almost 110,000 animal lovers worldwide remained glued to a YouTube streaming video of a pregnant giraffe named “April,” who is overdue to give birth at Animal Adventure Park in upstate New York.

Much more of a wait may mean a spring birth amid winter temperatures.

(Additional reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Frank McGurty and Sandra Maler)

Storms that pounded U.S. South seen easing leaving 5 dead

National Weather Service forecast map for January 3rd, 2017

(Reuters) – A severe storm system that left five people dead in the U.S. South is expected to weaken significantly on Tuesday, bringing only light rainfall along the East Coast, officials said.

The storms eased a day after strong winds from what is believed to have been a tornado killed four people in southeast Alabama, and a man was found drowned in floodwater in northwest Florida, state officials said.

“The threat of severe weather is much lower today,” meteorologist Bob Oravec of the Weather Prediction Center said by telephone.

Between half an inch and an inch (1.3 to 2.5 cm) of rain was expected to fall along the East Coast on Tuesday, including in Washington D.C. and in parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, Oravec said.

The rainfall threat was diminishing as the storm moved out of the South toward the U.S. Northeast, he said.

Unlike on Monday, when 3 to 5 inches (7.6 to 12.7 cm) of rain soaked parts of the U.S. South, causing flooding in some areas, no major floods were expected along the East Coast.

“Without a doubt it will be quieter” than on Monday, John Hart, a meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center, said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. East Coast to feel blast of arctic air that chilled Midwest

Pedestrians make their way along the Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

By Timothy Mclaughlin

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Residents of the U.S. East Coast on Thursday felt a blast of arctic air that earlier swept across the Midwest, with a large swath of the country now under a wind-chill advisory and Boston facing possible record-low temperatures on Friday.

The arctic air began blowing south from Canada into the Midwest earlier this week, prompting authorities to warn of the risk of frostbite and hypothermia.

The frigid air spread to the East Coast on Thursday, with the National Weather Service forecasting temperatures in New York City around 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-4 degrees Celsius) and similar cold in other cities including Philadelphia, Washington and Boston.

“The coldest of the arctic air is just now arriving onto the East Coast,” meteorologist Patrick Burke of the Weather Prediction Center said in a telephone interview.

Temperatures might drop enough in Boston that on Friday it could approach a record low, Burke said. Other areas along the East Coast as far south as Norfolk, Virginia, will also be unusually cold.

Residents in Chicago faced temperatures in the single digits and a wind chill of minus-16 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-27 degrees Celsius) on Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

Around 150 schools in the Chicago area were closed or scheduled to open late, due to the cold. Chicago Public Schools were in session and opened on time, according to a statement.

“Chicago’s cold goes beyond the physical level of coldness. It pinches your soul,” Twitter user Ivan Korkes wrote.

A woman whose body was found outside in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Monday has been determined to have died of hypothermia, according the Star Tribune newspaper, which cited the medical examiners’ office.

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said in a statement he would activate the state’s severe cold weather protocol beginning on Thursday evening, directing state officials to work with shelters to bring in homeless people.

Cold temperatures in the Midwest were expected to persist on Thursday, with certain areas from North Dakota to western Pennsylvania under wind chill advisories, Burke said.

The heaviest snowfall in the nation on Thursday will be around the Great Lakes in Michigan where up to 10 inches (25 cm) of snow was expected, and in parts of the U.S. West where a storm is pushing inland from the Pacific Coast, Burke said.

The Sierra Nevada mountain range in California and the mountains around Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming could receive more than two feet (61 cm) of snow, Burke said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Will Dunham)

Attack on web provider disrupts some sites located on U.S. East Coast

A padlock is displayed at the Alert Logic booth during the 2016 Black Hat cyber-security conference in Las Vegas, Nevada,

By Jim Finkle and Dustin Volz

(Reuters) – Service of some major internet sites was disrupted for several hours on Friday morning as internet infrastructure provider Dyn said it was hit by a cyber attack that disrupted traffic mainly on the U.S. East Coast.

Social network Twitter &, music-streamer Spotify, discussion site Reddit and The Verge news site were among the companies whose services were reported to be down on Friday morning.

Amazon.com Inc’s web services division, one of the world’s biggest cloud computing companies, also disclosed an outage that lasted several hours on Friday morning. Amazon could not immediately be reached for comment.

It was unclear who was responsible for the Dyn attack, which the company said disrupted operations for about two hours.

It is the latest in an increasingly menacing string of “denial of service” attacks disrupting internet sites by overwhelming servers with web traffic. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned on Oct. 14 that hackers were infecting routers, printers, smart TVs and other connected devices to build powerful armies of “bots” that can shut down websites.

Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Dyn, told Reuters he was not sure if the outages at Dyn and Amazon were connected.

“We provide service to Amazon but theirs is a complex network so it is hard to be definitive about causality at the moment,” he said.

Salesforce.com Inc’s  Heroku cloud-computing service platform, which runs on Amazon Web Services, disclosed a service outage that it said was related to a denial of service attack “against one of our DNS providers.”

Dyn said it was still trying to determine how the attack led to the outage.

“Our first priority over the last couple of hours has been our customers and restoring their performance,” Dyn Executive Vice President Scott Hilton said in a statement.

He said the problem was resolved at about 9:20 a.m. EDT (1320 GMT). It earlier reported its engineers were working to respond to an “attack” that mainly affected users on the East Coast.

An FBI representative said she had no immediate comment.

Dyn is a Manchester, New Hampshire-based provider of services for managing domain name servers (DNS), which act as switchboards connecting internet traffic. Requests to access sites are transmitted through DNS servers that direct them to computers that host websites.

Dyn’s customers include some of the world’s biggest corporations and Internet firms, such as Pfizer, Visa, Netflix and Twitter, SoundCloud and BT.

Attacking a large DNS provider can create massive disruptions because such firms are responsible for forwarding large volumes of internet traffic.

(Reporting By Jim Finkle in Boston and Dustin Volz in Washington; Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in Frankurt and Malathi Nayak in New York; Editing by Bill Trott)

Hurricane Matthew hits Haiti, heads for Cuba and then U.S.

Hurricane Matthew is seen in the Caribbean Sea in this enhanced infrared image from NOAA's GOES-East satellite

By Makini Brice

LES CAYES, Haiti (Reuters) – The fiercest Caribbean storm in almost a decade slammed Haiti on Tuesday with 145 mile-per-hour (230 kph) winds and surging seas that flooded coastal towns, killing at least one person and tearing at trees and rooftops before moving out to sea.

The eye of the violent and slow-moving Category 4 Hurricane Matthew passed over the western tip of Haiti, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, bringing devastating winds, torrential rains and a storm surge with massive waves. The storm was forecast to remain powerful as it made its way to Cuba and the Bahamas.

A hurricane watch was issued for parts of southeast Florida, which the forecasters said Matthew could reach late on Thursday.

Haitian port town Les Cayes, named for the sandy islands off its shore and twice destroyed by hurricanes in the 18th century, was hard hit.

“The situation in Les Cayes is catastrophic, the city is flooded, you have trees lying in different places and you can barely move around, the wind has damaged many houses and taken away their rooftops,” said Deputy Mayor Marie Claudette Regis Delerme, speaking from the town of about 70,000 people.

Regis Delerme said she herself had to flee from a building where she was attending a meeting about the storm, when a gust of wind ripped the roof off.

“It is very difficult to even try to help those who need assistance right now, and we lack financial means to do so,” she said.

One man died as the storm crashed through his home in the nearby beach town of Port Salut, Haiti’s civil protection service said. He had been too sick to leave for a shelter, officials said. A fisherman was killed in heavy seas over the weekend as the storm approached, and another was missing.

There was no immediate word on other potential casualties in the poorest country in the Americas.

RUNNING FOR COVER

Overnight, Haitians living in vulnerable coastal shacks on the western Tiburon Peninsula frantically sought shelter as Matthew closed in. Several districts in southern Haiti were flooded, with crops inundated with ocean and rain water.

As much as 3 feet (1 meter) of rain was forecast to fall over hills that are largely deforested and prone to flash floods and mudslides, threatening villages as well as shantytowns in the capital Port-au-Prince, where heavy rain fell overnight.

The hurricane comes at a time when tens of thousands of people are still living in flimsy tents and makeshift dwellings in Haiti after a 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people.

More than 9,000 people were huddled in shelters across Haiti, authorities said as the eye of the storm passed over the remote fishing town of Les Anglais.

Life-threatening flash floods and mudslides were likely in southern and northwestern Haiti, the hurricane center said. It expected Matthew to remain a powerful hurricane through at least Wednesday night.

The outer bands of the storm reached the area late on Monday, flooding dozens of houses in Les Anglais when the ocean rose, the mayor said.

In the nearby town of Tiburon, the mayor said people who had been reluctant to leave their homes also ran for cover when the sea rose and large waves began hitting the town.

Matthew was 35 miles (60 km) north of Haiti and 90 miles (145 km) south of the eastern tip of Cuba at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT). It was moving north at about 10 miles per hour (17 kph), the hurricane center said.

Cuba’s Communist government traditionally puts extensive efforts into saving lives and property in the face of storms, and authorities have spent days organizing teams of volunteers to move residents to safety and secure property.

The storm is expected to make a hit later on Tuesday in the province of Guantanamo, which is home to the disputed U.S. Naval base and military prison and also to a small Cuban city. The U.S. Navy ordered the evacuation of 700 spouses and children of service personnel as the storm approached.

Guantanamo’s mountainous terrain is the country’s second coffee producer after nearby Santiago, and the storm poses a major threat to the current harvest.

Haiti is due to hold a long-delayed presidential election on Oct. 9. The office of Interim President Jocelerme Privet said there was no change to the election date.

A hurricane watch was in effect from Deerfield Beach, Florida to the Volusia-Brevard county line, a coastal area near Cape Canaveral, which the storm could reach on Thursday, the hurricane center said.

“Direct hurricane impacts are possible in Florida,” the center said. It added that tropical storm or hurricane conditions could also affect parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina later this week, even if the center of Matthew remained offshore.

Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for Florida on Monday, designating resources for evacuations and shelters and putting the National Guard on standby.

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince and Makini Brice in Les Cayes; Additional reporting by Marc Frank and Sarah Marsh in Cuba and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Frances Kerry and Tom Brown)

Julia becomes tropical storm again as it mills off East Coast

Tropical Storm Julia is seen in an image from NOAA's GOES-East satellite

(Reuters) – Julia regained its designation as a tropical storm as it milled off the southeast coast of the United States on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.

The center of the storm, which drenched parts of northeast Florida, Georgia and South Carolina earlier this week, was not threatening land as it moved east-southeast about 270 miles (435 km) southwest of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the Miama-based center said.

Tropical Storm Julia, carrying winds of 40 mph (65 kph) with higher gusts, was expected to cause rip currents and hazardous wave conditions along the southeastern coast through the weekend, the center said.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Paul Tait)

Hermine lingers off U.S. East Coast

A woman walks her dog at Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York on Labor Day while high waves reached the shore due to post-tropical cyclone Hermine which tracked off the east coast of the U.S.

Reuters) – Hermine, a storm that raked Florida with hurricane-force winds last week, lingered on Tuesday off the U.S. East Coast where it was expected to produce heavy gusts and rain over the next two days.

Forecasters warned swimmers and boaters to stay out of treacherous waters and rough surf. New York City said all public beaches would be closed through Tuesday because of “life-threatening” rip currents.

At 2 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, Hermine’s center was about 110 miles (175 km) southeast of the eastern tip of Long Island and expected to move northwest at about 9 mph (15 kph).

Hermine was forecast to bring up to 2 inches (5 cm) of rain to Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts through Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.

A tropical storm warning remained in effect from the eastern end of New York’s Long Island and to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island off Massachusetts.

On Cape Cod and its islands, high surf and wind put a crimp in the Labor Day plans of many people looking to celebrate summer’s end, but some beaches farther south reopened.

Hermine was classified as a Category 1 hurricane when it slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast on Friday. It became a post-tropical storm by week’s end after its winds dropped below 74 miles per hour (119 kph) and it lost its tropical characteristics.

The storm, which crossed northern Florida and then moved up the Georgia and the Carolina coasts, was packing sustained surface winds of up to 65 mph (100 kph) with higher gusts, the National Weather Service said.

“Just because it’s a post-tropical cyclone doesn’t mean the impact of tropical force winds, winds in general and storm surge go away,” said National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen.

The storm has claimed at least three lives, in Florida and in North and South Carolina. The third reported death was that of a man struck by a car on a South Carolina highway on Friday as he tried to move a fallen tree, a Colleton County fire department spokesman said.

Hermine became the first hurricane to make landfall in Florida in 11 years, packing winds of 80 mph (130 kph), and knocking out power to 300,000 homes and businesses.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee)

Death toll rises to 8 as tornadoes sweep through Southeast

The death toll from the severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that damaged homes and businesses across the United States over the past two days now stands at eight, officials said.

The National Weather Service received 68 reports of tornadoes in the Gulf Coast and Southeast on Tuesday and Wednesday, along with about 500 reports of wind damage from Florida to Maine. The reports mentioned damages to homes and businesses, indicating some were destroyed, as well as numerous downed trees and power lines throughout the storm area.

Tornadoes were reported in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida on Tuesday, and Florida, Virginia and North Carolina on Wednesday. It’s possible that some of those storm reports reference the same funnel cloud, as there are numerous counties listed multiple times.

Officials said severe weather killed five people Wednesday, four in Virginia and one in South Carolina. They came a day after tornadoes killed two people in Louisiana and one in Mississippi.

The Virginia State Police said three people were killed in Waverly, where a funnel cloud was reportedly spotted, and “significant debris” left two state highways impassible in the area.

Officials in Appomattox County said one person was killed after a reported tornado left a trail of destruction that stretched at least eight miles. In a Facebook post, they said some 100 structures were damaged — 20 severely — and 40 percent of the county’s homes were without power.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency, joining governors in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi who issued similar decrees for the severe weather.

McAuliffe’s office said the governor was heading out to survey the damage on Thursday.

The National Weather Service’s reports indicate multiple houses were destroyed near Richmond, Virginia, and five houses were damaged near Granville, North Carolina, a snippet of the storm’s impact.

The reports also say winds toppled trees and power lines in areas where tornadoes weren’t seen.

In South Carolina, the Darlington County Coroner’s Office said a 58-year-old man was killed by a falling tree as he tried to remove storm debris from a road near his home.

Those downed trees and limbs helped knock out power to tens of thousands of people along the East Coast, some of whom were still without electricity on Thursday morning.

That included about 45,000 customers in Connecticut, local utility company Eversource said.

Category 4 Storm, Hurricane Joaquin, Slamming Bahamas; East Coast Prepares for Flooding

Hurricane Joaquin, a powerful Category 4 storm, has stalled over the central Bahamas, slamming the islands with hurricane-force winds, torrential rain, and storm surge flooding.

Dozens of citizens are trapped within their homes and authorities are not able to reach them. All schools in the Bahamas are closed. Homes have been flooded and roofs have been taken off buildings. So far, there have been no reports of casualties in the Bahamas according to Capt. Stephen Russell, the director of the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency.

Christian minister Dawn Taylor who is located on Eluthera stated that faith would get them through the storm.

“We depend on our God, and as long as he is with us, we will be fine and we will ride out the storm,” she said.

A U.S. Coast Guard container ship has also gone missing after getting caught in Joaquin’s path. The El Faro was traveling to San Juan, Puerto Rico from Jacksonville, Florida and reportedly was stuck somewhere near Crooked Island in the Bahamas. The ship has 33 crew members on board. The Coast Guard told CNN that when they last heard, the ship had been taking on water, but the flooding had been contained. As of right now, communications with the ship have stopped. The Air Force has been helping with the search for the missing ship and crew.

Hurricane Joaquin is not expected to make landfall on the U.S. but five East Coast states have still declared a state of emergency for potential torrential rain and severe flooding. Two lives have been claimed by the storm in the Carolinas where heavy rain has fallen for days. Four inches of rain was dumped in South Carolina causing flash floods that submerged several cars.

The National Hurricane Center reported to Fox News that the storm could near the U.S. East Coast on Sunday or Monday. The storm is expected to make a significant turn to the north on Friday and Saturday, leaving the Bahamas by late Friday evening.