Flights Canceled

NEW YORK (AP) – Three hundred flights were canceled early Sunday as a hard-blowing nor’easter bore down on the region and threatened to deliver what state officials have warned could be some of the worst flooding on coastal Long Island in 14 years.“We expect the cancellation numbers to go up significantly as the day goes on,” said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages all three of the area’s major airports. He said cancelations were at all of the airports and affected most carriers.Forecasters are expecting sustained winds of 40 miles an hour and a storm-surge of between three to five feet, a combination that has the potential to cause as much damage as a winter storm that wrecked havoc on the island in late 1992, Governor Spitzer said.The storm’s final track and strength are still uncertain, and Mr. Spitzer cautioned that the weather could still turn out to be milder than expected. But he said residents should plan for power outages, and the possibility that some low-lying areas might need to be evacuated.“It is wiser to be prepared,” he said.The storm had already rattled the Gulf states Friday and Saturday with violent thunderstorms, raked Texas with at least two tornadoes and was blamed for five deaths before heading toward the northeast coast.Light rain had already begun to fall by 3 a.m. Sunday in the New York area. The National Weather Service was predicting heavier rainfall by about 8 a.m., and warning of the chance of “major coastal flooding” by Sunday night. Rain was expected to continue into Monday. There was a possibility of bad snow, too, further upstate.“We probably see a storm like this, at this time of year, probably once every 25 years or so,” said Brian Korty, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Camp Springs, Md.Bryan Baldwin, a spokesman for JetBlue Airlines, said the carrier had canceled 34 flights Sunday, mostly in and out of JFK airport and a few out of Boston. American Airlines said it expected to cancel some flights later in the day.State work crews west of Albany were getting snow plows out of storage and reattaching them to trucks in anticipation of snow that could be heavy in some small pockets, said the state’s deputy secretary for public safety, Michael Balboni.Mr. Spitzer said he also deployed 3,200 members of the National Guard to areas that might be effected by the storm.In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg said the police and fire departments were ready for any problems caused by the storm, including flooding due to heavy rain, high spring tides and gusting winds.“We have to prepare for the worst, while we’re hoping for the best,” Mr. Bloomberg said.In Manhattan, the threatened areas include the Lower East Side, the Financial District and the FDR Drive. Beaches in the outer boroughs, including Brooklyn’s Coney Island and the Rockaways in Queens, were also cited as danger zones for flooding. Bloomberg said at this point, the possibility of evacuations in the city was slight.City workers were cleaning out catch basins Saturday to help flush away water more quickly. Extra teams from the Parks Department will be ready to remove any trees downed by the storm, the mayor said.Organizers canceled events around the city in anticipation of bad weather, including a Greek-American Independence Day parade that had been planned on Fifth Avenue.Westchester County officials were filling sandbags, freeing storm drains of debris and readying boats and road barricades. In Rockland County, utilities lined up extra crews, while emergency agencies got ready for the possibility of power outages, car wrecks and flooding.The December 1992 nor’easter mentioned by Mr. Spitzer on Saturday washed away beach and sand dunes, knocked out power, and left thousands of people temporarily homeless – their houses submerged beneath feet of water.___On the Net:New York State Emergency Management Office: http://www.semo.state.ny.us/New York City Office of Emergency Management: http://www.nyc.gov/oem

Flights Canceled

Flights Canceled

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