North Suburban Counties Get Clobbered After Snowstorm Shifts Course
TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Westchester County and other counties north of New York City got clobbered by the snowstorm Tuesday as its course shifted.
A blizzard warning remained in effect until the early evening for the lower Hudson Valley, including Northern Westchester, Orange, Putnam and Rockland counties.
Huge numbers were seen as predicted in some parts of the area. CBS2's Lonnie Quinn reported the snow totaled 26 inches in upstate Narrowsburgh, 23.5 inches in Montgomery, 18.1 inches in Stony Point, and 14 inches in Mount Kisco.
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"Mother Nature is an unpredictable lady sometimes, she was unpredictable once again today," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. "When the storm moved west it increased the totals in other parts of the state. The Mid-Hudson area up to the Capitol District has been hit very hard."
In Westchester, the snow was deepest up-county, CBS2's Lou Young reported. It measured in dozens of inches in northern parts of the county.
One family in Peekskill decided it was a good day for sledding – and they used a plastic storage bin as a substitute for an actual sled.
But not everyone was quite so thrilled to deal with the snow. One man's Rav4 left him stuck at work at the Yorktown Heights office building he takes care of.
The man has been living in the area for a long time and has had the vehicle for 16 years – but this was the first time it got stuck. CBS2 helped him dig out and send him on his way.
In Dobbs Ferry Tuesday night, a Con Edison crew was working to knock ice off some power equipment.
Meanwhile, one Dobbs Ferry family that spent the day hunkered down at home narrowly escaped danger, CBS2's Tony Aiello reported. A massive tree took out the entire backside of a condominium at the Walden Wood complex.
"All of a sudden I heard this noise -- it was unbelievable," said Connie Brandel of Dobbs Ferry. "I ran to the back and saw this huge tree that came down."
Despite the incredible damage, the family inside the unit made it out shaken, but not seriously injured.
The highest snow measurement in Dobbs Ferry was 15 inches.
In New Rochelle, there was danger of a different kind. Firefighters battled slippery conditions at the scene of a fire on Thornbury Road.
"It was pretty fierce. There was smoke everywhere on a lot of fire. So we are all concerned about it leaping over to another house, but thank god it was able to stay contained," neighbor Kevin Ross said.
Firefighters were looking into the possibility that the fire was caused by a handpush snowblower that the home had just used, and then parked and refueled near propane tanks in the garage.
Firefighters said the heavy snow and bitter cold make it a struggle to save the home.
In Mount Kisco, CBS2's yardstick showed just shy of a foot of snow on the ground near the home of the Bingham family. Mr. Bingham had a task for young Ryan – shovel the driveway. But Ryan's mother had a treat.
"She made us bacon egg and cheeses, so that was great," Ryan Bingham said.
Along Highway 172, plows threw snow onto the sidewalk – leaving a whopping 18 inches for crews to clear.
They had to shovel the top layer just so the snowblower could do the rest.
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The snow remained treacherous for road conditions late into the afternoon and night. The warning was to avoid using the car if at all possible until Wednesday.
Michael Murphy, chief of the Rockland Paramedics, said the adventurous had been getting into trouble on the back roads.
"Stay off the roads. I don't understand why folks are out here – I really don't. There's a state of emergency. People have been told to stay home, and yet, there's still some folks out," Murphy said.
Despite the woes, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino said "it could've been a lot worse."
"Things have been basically just a normal storm," he said. "At times it was blizzard-like conditions. Earlier this morning it was just snow coming down, a little later on this morning there was some freezing rain involved in that but it really didn't affect power, at one point we had at most 200 outages."
Metro-North suspended service into and out of Grand Central Terminal at noon. Limited service was set to resume at 6 p.m., and normal service was expected to return by Wednesday morning.
The state has banned tractor-trailers from most of its major interstate highways, including the entire length of the 570-mile Thruway system from New York City to the Pennsylvania border in western New York.
The ban includes the Thruway system's 426-mile main line -- interstates 87 and 90 -- from New York City to Buffalo as well as the New England Thruway, the Cross Westchester Expressway, the Niagara Thruway, the Garden State Parkway Connector, the Berkshire Connector and the Erie Section.
Tractor-trailers are also banned from interstates 81, 84, 88 and 86/Route 17.
Military humvees were spotted on I-87, enforcing the ban on the Thruway, CBS2's Lou Young reported.
Some emergency workers out in Nyack said the ban has been causing some problems on the back roads.
"Some of the trucks are trying to get off the Thruway cause they've been banned, so they're trying to take secondary roads and they're getting jammed up a little bit," Michael Murphy of Rockland Paramedics said.
In Binghamton, where interstates 81, 88 and 86/Route 17 meet, Broome County officials have declared a state of emergency and banned all non-essential travel.
The nasty weather conditions are also causing flight disruptions at Stewart International Airport. Travelers are urged to contact their airline to check their flight status.
"My flight got cancelled until Wednesday, so I figured might as well rent a car and drive home," one man traveling from Washington D.C. to Connecticut said. "I'd rather trudge through the snow for eight hours than sit in a hotel for two days."
Cuomo declared a state of emergency Tuesday for all of New York's 62 counties and directed non-essential state employees to stay home from work.
Cuomo said the state will be redeploying its assets to deal with the worsening conditions in the Southern Tier -- the I-88 corridor that goes up to Albany and Central New York -- which could see up to 30 inches of snow.
(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
