Massive Storm Dumped

Two Feet-Plus On Newtown

By Nancy Crevier, Andrew Gorosko & Shannon Hicks

Newtown was hit with what may be a record-breaking amount of snow on January 11–12, with residents digging out from under more than two feet once the storm tapered to flurries by early Wednesday morning.

While the forecast was for 10 to 18 inches of snow overnight, Newtown woke up Wednesday morning to contend with knee-deep snow and even higher drifts. Residents posting comments on The Bee’s Facebook page reported 27 inches of snow on Mile Hill South, 30 inches in Hattertown, and drifts of three or four feet in locations all around town. In his press conference at the state emergency center at noon, Governor Dannel Malloy reported that Newtown seemed to have the heaviest snowfall in the state with 29 inches.

The storm combined the forces of weather systems approaching the Northeast from the Southeast and West and exploded over Connecticut in the middle of the night. Heavy bands of snow dumped large amounts of snow in just a few hours over a region of central and western Connecticut, including Newtown. The Newtown-Danbury area was posting some of the highest accumulation numbers in the state Wednesday morning as a result.

The storm’s intensity was fueled by two storms that merged, according to meteorologist Gary Lessor. One storm approached New England from the Southeast and the other moved in from the Great Lakes and across the Midwest before the two storms merged at the Mid-Atlantic states. The merged storm’s formation was so intense that it produced thunder and lightning in some areas, he said.

Mr Lessor, who is the assistant to the director of meteorological studies and The Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, called the January 12 snowstorm’s effect on Connecticut “impressive.” The snowstorm, he said, dropped 27 inches of snow on Newtown, as measured by a trained weather observer.

By comparison, the storm dropped 28 inches of snow in New Fairfield, 29 inches in Meriden, and 28 inches in Southbury.

“It crippled the entire state,” he said. The snow fell at a rapid rate for eight to 12 hours, depending upon the location.

“This certainly is a record [snowfall] for many locations,” he said, adding, “When history looks back on this storm, it likely will be considered the third worst [snowstorm] in Connecticut’s recorded history.”

The greatest amount of snow that ever fell in a given location during a single snowstorm in Connecticut during recorded history, according to Mr Lessor, was 50 inches of snow that fell in Middletown between March 12 and 14, 1888.

Nevertheless, this week’s storm is probably a storm by which other snowstorms during the coming century will be measured, he said.

The storm came at a good time, Mr Lessor said, noting that the storm occurred when there was little traffic on the roads.

Schools And Offices Closed

Newtown schools were closed by administrators on Tuesday, well in advance of the storm, and municipal offices followed suit. By early Wednesday evening it was decided that public schools would also remain closed on Thursday to allow town crews and the district’s transportation department more time to dig out parking lots and buses.

“Geno Faille [director of buildings for Newtown Board of Education] and I got on the phone with [Schools Superintendent] Janet Robinson, and the deciding factor was we could not get the narrow roads open completely,” Mr Hurley said Thursday morning. “We did not want to put buses on the roads where oncoming cars could not get around them. That would have created traffic jams all around town, but really is was more a safety issue.

“It turned out to be an easy call [to cancel school for a second day] and the right call,” he added.

Many offices and businesses closed or operated on Wednesday with skeleton crews only, heeding Gov Malloy’s plea to state residents to stay off the roads. The large grocery stores managed to keep their doors open for residents, but with limited staffs.

There were very few calls for emergency help during the stretch of the storm. Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps was sent on three separate calls within one hour, however. During the noon hour, the volunteers were dispatched to one location to get a woman who was going into labor to the hospital, to a second location on a report of a hand laceration from a snow blower, and a third location to aid the fire department as they helped rescue a Public Works employee whose truck had slid into a pond along Crestwood Drive.

Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue and Newtown Ambulance were dispatched to Crestwood Drive for that call. The town truck had been plowing and on the driver’s last pass he reportedly slid off the road into a pond. Firefighters helped extricate the patient out of his vehicle. The driver was then transported to Danbury Hospital to have minor injuries checked.

By noon, the snow had tapered off and skies began to clear. The sustained winds and dropping temperatures, however, promised that the long cleanup may be challenging for both municipal crews and for private citizens and contractors. It was well into late afternoon before a few people tried to go out for a drive, but most chose to wait until Thursday morning before venturing out.

Those who did venture out on the snow-covered roads early Wednesday may have found themselves being winched out of the ditch by a tow truck.

“It’s crazy,” reported Sugar Hill Service Center owner Rob Merriweather, who said the overnight storm was actually a blessing compared to the storm during the January 7 rush hour.

“We probably towed 30 cars that evening. But today, while we have been busy, people are either staying home — the smart thing to do — or we are towing them.”

The body shop at Sugar Hill Service Center was filling up with cars in need of repair, due to a lot of slippery crashes, said Mr Merriweather, adding that the only way he was able to get from his Old Road home to work at 7 am was by skiing down to the bottom of the road, where one of his plow trucks met him. “I couldn’t even get out of my driveway with four-wheel-drive,” he said.

Digging Out

Public Works crews started getting the calls to get back to work by 9:45 Tuesday night, Public Works Director Frederick Hurley said Thursday morning. They were on the road for the next 24 hours.

“We were going full bore from 11 o’clock on, and the last guys went home around 9:30 last night,” he said Thursday morning. During those long hours, plows went over roads multiple times, trying to keep up with the snow that was falling at a rate of about two inches per hour. Flurries were seen as early at 9 pm Tuesday, and the storm was in full force by the time the plows hit the roads two hours later. Snow continued steadily until just around noon Wednesday.

The amount of snow that fell created issues with plowing because the large piles have to go somewhere, and it has been years since Newtown has had this much snow on the ground. Many roads were reduced to one lane initially, providing access for drivers while crews continued working to clear other roadways and parking lots.

“The toughest thing they were dealing with was how much they were getting out there every hour,” Mr Hurley said of the efforts to clear roadways. “They would go in and plow a road, and then we’d get a call and a homeowner would say they hadn’t seen a plow yet. In their mind they weren’t lying. They didn’t see the plow go by, and they didn’t see their road, but they just got covered again so fast it was hard to keep up.”

Public Works crews went home around 9:30 Wednesday night, and returned to work at 7 am Thursday.

“We had the last road plowed and sanded by 9 last night,” Mr Hurley said on Thursday. It usually takes about eight hours once snow stops falling for crews to reach every road in town, so two additional hours after the end of Wednesday’s storm was not at all bad, he felt. While roadways were still narrow, they were at least passable.

“They weren’t fully pushed back by then, but they were all open,” he said. “We were in pretty good shape by 9 pm, which I think it a pretty good effort.”

First Selectman Pat Llodra, in cooperation with the Newtown Highway and police departments, asked on Thursday morning that all motorists exercise extreme caution at intersections in town due to piled snow compromising sight lines to crossing traffic. Crews will be working diligently to reduce snow piles in these areas throughout the day.

In addition to the town equipment, Public Works hired four additional pieces, a loader and a backhoe each from The Kimball Group and Nagy Brothers Construction. This equipment helped clean sight lights and move piles around parking lots, schools, and roads, said Mr Hurley.

Thursday’s challenge was to widen all of the town’s roadways.

“[We’ve] got piles of snow on sight lines that they gotta try to knock down,” Mr Hurley said. “The roads are open, but now they gotta to push them back as far as they can so that two cars can pass. They’re going to be all day. Basically it’s an all-day cleanup operation.”

In many cases, he said, snow will have to be loaded and moved from one location to another.

“And that takes time,” said the public works director.

Bracing For The Storm

Heeding ominous weather reports, Newtown residents prepared for the snowstorm by flooding local stores on Tuesday evening, January 11, for food, water, batteries, and any other items they deemed necessary for a snow day.

Mark A. Caraluzzi, president and CEO of Caraluzzi’s market on Queen Street, reported that his store was very busy. “Customers were grabbing the usual storm essentials; bottled water, ice melt, wood, milk, eggs, bread, cereal, deli meats, etc. However, with this storm customers were also hitting the meat department heavy, grabbing beef and pork roasts, whole chickens and turkeys, and hams almost as if the intended on staying at home and enjoying a holidaylike meal.”

With the advanced storm warning, the store management had more time to plan with staffing and product demand, he noted, “which is not always the case, so we were very well prepared. The store is open for normal hours 7 am to 10 pm and is running on a very light crew of dedicated employees.”

The staff had time to plan the day before and many commuted with fellow employees who had 4-wheel or AWD vehicles, Mr Caraluzzi said.

“We definitely had more volume than normal last night,” Big Y manager in charge Don Markowsky reported Wednesday morning. Again, a skeleton crew was on hand to take care of the few customers who had failed to stock up the night before as they filtered in. “We have told our staff pretty much to stay put. We will be open our regular hours, but it is just a light crew,” said Mr Markowsky.

At Newtown Hardware, manager Dan Sorrentino said that Tuesday was an unusually busy day, with people purchasing shovels and bags of rock salt in preparation for the snow.

“We really guessed right this year,” said Mr Sorrentino on Wednesday morning. “We still have shovels and salt in stock, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go quickly the next few days,” he said. On Wednesday, Mr Sorrentino and the other two employees did not expect to see a great deal of business. “We couldn’t even get into our parking lot until 9 am. It was buried. But we’ll be here all day now,” said Mr Sorrentino.

Route 302 was virtually dead, outside of a few plow trucks, George Hamilakis, owner of Dodgingtown Market & Deli, reported late Wednesday morning. He arrived at the deli at 4 am, after a slow drive in to work, and found it necessary to plow his parking area every two hours until midmorning just to keep it accessible. The market was not overly busy before closing time the evening before, he said.

“People seemed to know ahead of time and set themselves up right for today. We have very little business right now. People are stuck in their houses, and that’s where they should be,” he said. The few customers he had seen were “mesmerized by the amount of snow.”

At the Citgo station on Church Hill Road, attendants James Riddle and Tom Selleck were “steady busy” all afternoon, James said, as customers stopped in to fill their car’s gas tanks and cans for their snow blowers.

“We’ve been slammed,” Tom said just before 9 pm Tuesday. “From 3 o’clock until about 8:30, we haven’t stopped.”

“We’ve easily had 200 cars come through here, and that’s not including the diesel trucks for the plow guys,” added James. “I don’t think we’ve been inside more than five minutes since we got here.”

By 9 pm Tuesday, the two were still busy but there were usually a few minutes between the cars pulling in to get their gas tanks filled. They were busy, but still smiling as customers handed over credit cards or cash in exchange for gallons of gasoline.

“I think we handled it well,” said Tom, getting ready as another customers pulled into the small station. “I don’t think we had too many frustrated customers.

“You can smell it in the air,” he said. “It’s definitely coming.”

We’re not done with the snow yet.

WCSU Meteorologist Gary Lessor said this week that it appears some more inclement winter weather is headed for the area next week.