Surprise spring storm pounds Northeast
(CBS News) JOHNSTOWN, Pa. -- A massive spring nor'easter was spinning over the Northeast Monday morning, with flooding rains, heavy snow and damaging winds.
The worst of the rain had fallen from the Carolinas to Canada. And some areas on the storm's western edge were seeing a healthy dose of heavy, wet snow, including Johnstown, Pa.
There were several inches of snow on the ground in Johnstown Monday morning. Much more was expected throughout the day. Upwards of a foot of snow was predicted in the region.
That created a snow day -- a very unusual late April snow day, with a number of school closings across the region. That means fewer school buses on the road, but also, in some cases, fewer plows.
You had such a mild winter and mild spring, people took plows off their trucks. They were putting them back on trucks in parts of western Pennsylvania, also in Ohio and parts of western New York, in areas like Buffalo, where they could see more than a foot of more of snow, according to "CBS This Morning: Saturday" weather anchor Lonnie Quinn.
Further east, the real problem was rain, localized flooding. It trapped some motorists in Jersey City, N.J. They needed tow trucks to get free from the floodwaters.
It's likely to be a messy, soggy, wet commute up and down the Eastern Seaboard today.
In Johnstown, temperatures were hovering around freezing, which means it's a very dense, wet snow, and it's really sticking to the trees and branches, creating concerns for widespread power outages.
To see Seth Doane speaking about the storm with "CBS This Morning" co-hosts Erica Hill and Charlie Rose, and to see "CBS This Morning: Saturday" weather anchor Lonnie Quinn tell what the storm is expected to do next, click on the video in the player above.
