Storm hammers the East Coast with heavy rain, snow and wind

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Bill Wadell reported live from Long Island, which was just one of many areas dealing with flooding and other storm impacts along the East Coast on Dec. 11.

Transcript

00:00Very wet in the northeast, we'll be monitoring the situation all along the east coast here.

00:05Jeff, let's take it right out to you.

00:06All right, yeah. You can see the forum there to the right as well.

00:09Some familiar scenes for some.

00:11And here we have Bill Waddell in West Hampton Beach.

00:15This area's been hammered by wind and rain this evening.

00:17And activist Bill Waddell joins us now from West Hampton Beach.

00:20Bill, that summertime hot spot is kind of a mess tonight.

00:25Yeah, it really is, Jeff. Barely seeing any drivers out here tonight.

00:29Most of the families listening to the warnings and the advice, just hunkering down, staying home.

00:34Not wanting to deal with this rain or the wind.

00:36You can see, we're seeing quite a bit of this here in the Hamptons.

00:39Standing water and ponding right along some of the streets leading to the beaches.

00:43Now, earlier today here on Long Island, we were seeing wind gusts 30, some reports above 50 miles an hour at times.

00:51The big focus, just this funnel of moisture, essentially an atmospheric river.

00:56It's linked back all the way to the tropics, nearly 2,000 miles away.

01:00Bringing in not just mild or muggy air, but all of this rain and all of the problems that come with it.

01:06Check out the new video back into AccuWeather.

01:08And you can see the ponding and the street flooding that we have been encountering tonight here in the Hamptons.

01:13This is the reason why officials have been urging people to slow down and to stay off the roads if you can.

01:20This flooding and street ponding, this can be incredibly tough to see,

01:24especially when you're driving in very dark areas like we've been encountering here in the Hamptons.

01:29Hydroplaning is a big concern on the roads.

01:32We did see some trouble on Interstate 80 earlier today over in New Jersey.

01:37State police had to block lanes near Bud Lake after a driver lost control on the wet highway.

01:43Crews have been busy throughout the day, not just responding to spin-outs and crashes,

01:48but also other road crews have been busy clearing leaves out of drains to prevent clogs with all of this rain.

01:56Now, just a few weeks ago, it was brush fires that were making headlines here in New York and New Jersey.

02:03Dozens of them.

02:04And there are areas still, both here in New York and New Jersey, that are facing pockets of severe and extreme drought, Jeff.

02:12But again, all of this rain moving in, at least that's the good news with this.

02:16Yes, we're dealing with some flooding.

02:18We're dealing with issues and problems on the roads.

02:20But at the end of the day, this rain is beneficial.

02:23It's going to help put a dent into the drought situation here in this part of the Northeast.

02:27Well, thank you for reporting there, Bill.

02:29I know it's been a long day of driving and fighting through some nasty travel weather there.

02:33We spoke with the New York City Department of Environmental Quality there.

02:38They keep an eye on the reservoirs.

02:40They're optimistic about improvements coming, obviously, on the heels of this into the Catskills over the next several days.

02:46Let's take a look at what's going on in West Hampton Beach here.

02:49We saw that from Bill.

02:50And overall, as we look at radar, soaking rain is continuing to fall through this whole area from New York City,

02:57the Brooklyn Bridge, all the way east into Suffolk County there.

03:01And a quick look at radar shows we have Bill's area circled there, West Hampton Beach.

03:05He's out there in the east-central parts of Long Island, eastern Long Island.

03:08And the rain is just pretty incessant here.

03:10We've had a couple of lightning strikes not far from the coast of Rhode Island and areas near Newport.

03:15But overall, the rain is the main issue here, rain and wind with very limited lightning.

03:21And we have been dealing with still every acre of New Jersey facing a steady rain right now.

03:26I don't think there's any dry real estate in Delaware right now.

03:30You can see the radar site there, that little dot on the map near Dover.

03:34But it's raining there as well.

03:36And we have rain through southern parts of the southeast part of Virginia too.

03:40So, again, soaking rain and wind are the main concerns.

03:43Let's take a look at these power outage numbers.

03:45As we take you up into areas around Massachusetts now, we're on the list here with 12,500 addresses in the dark

03:50and 15,000 addresses in the dark into North Carolina.

03:54The wind is the culprit there.

03:56Our wind shift, there's a prefrontal trough moving into areas near Newport, Rhode Island right now.

04:02That's where you see that first most obvious straight line.

04:05The true front is actually moving through New York City.

04:07That's the secondary one.

04:09It's a little less obvious.

04:10That's the wind shift.

04:11So we have a band of heavy rain and wind and then also the true front bringing us some strong winds.

04:17We're gusting to 47 miles per hour in Boston.

04:19If that were sustained, that would be tropical storm force.

04:22And the temperatures are up here, 61 in Boston.

04:25You are by far the warmest spot here on the regional map.

04:28Still holding at 30 now in Pittsburgh.

04:30We lost another degree or two.

04:32It's getting cold in western PA.

04:34That's from west to east.

04:35So it's snowing in parts of Tennessee.

04:38We have rain about 200 miles north of Maine.

04:41It's not about how far north you are with this setup.

04:43It's how far west or east.

04:45The cold is coming from the west.

04:47The warmth is present to the east with that really abundant flow from the south.

04:50Lots of moisture is present.

04:52And this really steps away to the east here.

04:54But the rain is still falling.

04:56This is an atmospheric river event with a connection to the western part of the Caribbean here

05:01driving that warmth and the moisture in with 2 to 4 inches of rain plus snow melt.

05:06We're going to see a lot of areas face some minor river flooding.

05:09And the wind is driving these outages now up into parts of southeast Massachusetts.

05:13Gusts of 50 plus miles per hour for some.

05:15And as the winds continue to blow, as the storm evolves and moves offshore,

05:20we'll be dealing with regional power outages right along the immediate New England coast.

05:24Now, Bree, we're dealing with some colder air.

05:27And the lake effect snow is going to be a big story here to the west.

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