Nor'easter 'Bomb Cyclone' Kills 8; Massive Power Outages Remain

A powerful nor'easter, 2018's second confirmed "bomb-cyclone" of snow, wind and freezing rain, pummeled much of the Eastern Seaboard, killing at least eight people, uprooting trees and snapping utility poles from Maine to Virginia, flooding coastal towns in large swaths of the Northeast, and knocking out power to more than 2 million people across multiple states.

Hours of snow or rain coupled with ferocious winds with gusts as high as 93 mph toppled trees that killed people in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, New York and Rhode Island as they drove, slept or stepped out for their mail. Two of the victims were killed in Virginia, including a 6-year-old boy who died after a tree fell on his home. Another child, an 11-year-old boy, was killed in Putnam County, New York, by a tree that crashed into his home and pinned him underneath. The boy's mother was hospitalized.

The storm struck Friday and carried into Saturday morning, grounding flights at major airports across the East Coast. Amtrak service was suspended on the northeast corridor. Sheets of rain pounded some areas. Portions of New York state were buried under more than three feet of snow. Syracuse University canceled a full day of classes because of weather for only the third time in its history.

Massachusetts took an especially hard beating.

A foot of snow had fallen in parts of the state by Saturday morning and intense flooding forced many to leave their homes. In Quincy, Massachusetts, hundreds of people had to be rescued by authorities. Electricity was knocked out for nearly a half-million people in Massachusetts at its peak.

"People in these homes need to plan for a prolonged outage," Kurt Schwartz, director of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, said as the storm approached. "This is a multi-day restoration event."
"This is one of the more extreme storms in recent memory in terms of coastal flooding and damaging wind potential along the coast, but also includes heavy wet snow and heavy rain as important factors," MEMA said.

Near-record high tides sent waves of water crashing over seawalls and onto land in New England's coastal towns, turning roads into gushing rivers and yards in some areas surrounded flooding homes like moats. Tides of nearly 15 feet were recorded at Boston Harbor.

Along much of the Eastern Seaboard residents remained under flood warnings well into Saturday and weather authorities warned that the wind, rain and flood effects could linger for days. Parts of eastern Long Island braced for up to 5 inches of rain through Saturday. The rest of the region expected 2 to 4 inches. As Saturday night approached, hundreds of thousands of people were still without power across the Mid-Atlantic and New England.

"The primary remaining hazard is all the floodwater including the effects of the high tide with the continued onshore flow of the wind," Patrick Burke, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in Maryland, told The Associated Press. "The damaging winds we saw yesterday have calmed down just a bit. But it's still going to be a windy day."

The storm was the second "bomb-cyclone" of 2018. Dan Kottlowski, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather, told The New York Times that the rapid pressure drop of the storm classified it as a so-called "bomb-cyclone."

The term is used to describe a storm that rapidly intensifies, dropping at least 24 millibars over 24 hours.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Photo: A rescue worker helps carry a rescued animal away from a flooded apartment building as the Hough's Neck area is flooded due to a strong coastal storm on March 2, 2018 in Quincy, Massachusetts. A nor'easter hit the east coast on Friday, bringing coastal flooding, heavy snow and strong winds to the area. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images News/Getty Images)