Blizzards Set to Hit Northeast, Plains

A pedestrian walks along snowy
Gateway Center in downtown 
Rochester, N.Y.
(Will Yurman/Democrat and Chronicle/AP Photo)

Dec. 29— The Northeast is bracing for one of the worst storms to hit the region in recent years as a powerful winter system moves out of the Midwest and South, giving those areas a break from the ice and snow that fell there earlier this week.
 

The storm system crippled the southern Plains and is blamed for at least 41 deaths. It is expected to dump as much as a foot of snow on the Midwest and Northeast over New Year’s weekend. 
     Forecaster Eric Wolf from the National Weather Service said snow could fall from Washington, D.C., all the way up to the Boston area.
     Forecasters expect the storm to develop today and then move up the East Coast and into New England on Saturday. 

Stocking Up on Supplies
The New York area hasn’t been hit with a major snowfall in a few years, but already people have begun flocking to the stores to stock up on necessities.
     Home Depot sales representative Dominic Hacamo in Secaucus, N.J., said business has been brisk.
     “We sold 1,000 shovels within the last 12 hours, and 5,000 bags of ice melt,” Hacamo said. “One lady walked out of here with 10 shovels under her arm!”
     Arturo Berrocal was one of those customers walking out with shovels and ice melt.
     “I’m getting six bags of ice melt and three shovels,” Berrocal said as he left the store, “ one for everyone in the family.”
     In New York City, where thousands of people make a yearly pilgrimage to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Times Square, cleanup crews have already reved up the snow plows, along with about 200,000 pounds of salt and thousands of cleanup workers.
     It could be the largest snowfall in the city since the blizzard of Jan. 7-8, 1996, which dumped more than 20 inches of snow.
     The mayor’s Office of Emergency Management will have more than 100 people working throughout the weekend monitoring the storm and getting ready to dispatch crews as needed.
     “We are planning with all the other agencies to get rid of the snow as quickly as possible,” said Frank McCarton of the emergency management office. 

In the Plains, a Snowy December
The weather system that is expected to hit the Northeastern part of the country on Saturday dumped up to 9 inches of snow in Minnesota, putting the state on track for one of the three snowiest Decembers in more than 100 years, said Assistant State Climatologist Pete Boulay.
     Boulay said 28.5 inches of snow have fallen this month in the Twin Cities — the most ever recorded was 33.2 inches in 1969.
     The heavy snow ranged far and wide. Before Thursday’s storm, more than 30 inches of snow had fallen in parts of far north and south Minnesota, according to Boulay’s office. 

In South, Cleanup Continues
Meanwhile, the South is digging out from several days of ice and snow.
     In parts of Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, ice has brought down trees and power lines and turned roads and highways into skating rinks.
     President Clinton declared a state of emergency in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Hundreds of thousands of residents in both states have been left without electricity.
     “We are having to rebuild from the ground up,” Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said today on ABCNEWS’ Good Morning America. “It literally is a rebuilding of every pole, line and distribution system in many cases.”
     Huckabee added that it would still take up to 10 more days to restore power to parts of the state.
     Authorities blame 41 deaths on the bad weather: 22 in Texas, 11 in Oklahoma, four in New Mexico, two in Arkansas and one each in Missouri and Minnesota. A Greyhound bus rolled over on an icy stretch of Interstate 80 in Nebraska, injuring 33 people.
     In Texas, at least 1,000 people were stranded in their cars Wednesday and Thursday on a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 20 east of Abilene. In Oklahoma, the dead included a 12-year-old boy whose makeshift sled barreled down a highway embankment and into the path of a tractor-trailer Wednesday. 

ABCNEWS.com’s Maria F. Durand, WABC in New York, ABCNEWS Radio and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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