HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A significant winter storm has taken aim at central and eastern Pennsylvania, threatening widespread problems for commuters and raising the possibility of more power outages on the heels of last week’s ice storm.
Forecasters said some areas could get a foot or more of snow on Thursday, with a wintry mix possible in southeastern suburban counties. High winds were expected, increasing the chances that trees and branches could take out electrical lines.
“Snow has become a four-letter word in Delaware County, and all along the East Coast this winter,” said Tom McGarrigle, chairman of the Delaware County Council outside Philadelphia.
The state put 450 National Guardsmen on duty overnight and activated the emergency operations center in Harrisburg.
“I’m really concerned about the power grid in the southeast, given that it’s just been put back up,” said Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency director Glenn Cannon.
Precise predictions about the scope and location of the largest accumulations were hard to come by, but some were saying it would be the Harrisburg area’s biggest storm so far this winter.
“These storms are always tricky, these coastal storms,” said meteorologist Craig Evanego with the National Weather Service in State College. “You get the narrow swath of the heaviest snow, and it’s hard to say where that will happen.”
Numerous municipalities in the projected path imposed special parking and travel restrictions ahead of the storm’s arrival, and schools began to announce closings late Wednesday.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike prohibited empty and double tractor-trailers from Breezewood east to the Delaware River and the entire Northeastern Extension.
PennDOT spokeswoman Erin Waters-Transatt said the highway agency was moving equipment from Erie, one of the nation’s snowiest cities, and other western areas to Lancaster, Reading and the Lehigh Valley.
Waters-Transatt said PennDOT has used 926,000 tons of salt so far this season, compared to 748,000 tons at this point, on average, in recent years.
“Statewide, we do have enough for a handful of more storms,” she said.
Lebanon City Mayor Sherry Capello declared a snow emergency early to give people time to get their vehicles off snow emergency routes. She said the winter season, with some 26 days of snowfall so far, has been tough on her maintenance workers.
“The guys are not getting a break,” Capello said. “It’s like every week and sometimes several times a week they are doing something related to a winter event.”
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said the city’s 43 inches so far is nearly twice a normal year. If this storm is more than 6 inches in the city, it will represent the first time in recorded history that Philadelphia has seen four 6-inch storms in a single season.
“This is highly unusual weather and weather patterns, not just here in Philadelphia, but in talking with other mayors and government officials up and down the East Coast,” Nutter said.
At Cantelmi’s Hardware Store in Bethlehem, manager Tom Marks said he was doing a brisk business in heaters, shovels, snow blowers and just about everything storm-related except ice melt. That item was sold out.
“We should have a load coming next week,” he said. “It’s been delayed because it’s just a high demand right now.”
PECO spokesman Greg Smore said its emergency center never got a chance to shut down from last week’s storm.
“Right now what we’re doing is we are taking our crews out to look at areas where we might have weakened trees where they might be in a weakened state,” Smore said. The utility company also is working to retain out-of-area crews in the expectation of more outages.
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Moore reported from Philadelphia.
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