Weekend Blizzard, First Since 2018, Was A Major Event

The winter nor’easter that descended on the area on Saturday and dumped nearly 2 feet of snow on parts of the East End caused plenty of fanfare and disruption.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc was able to keep it all in perspective, by remembering the last time he dealt with a blizzard.

It was January 4, 2018, just three days into his first term as supervisor, and a powerful storm that dumped more than 30 inches of snow in some parts of the town created a degree of havoc that made Saturday’s weather event pale in comparison.

“Three days into my term, I was declaring a state of emergency,” he said on Monday, recalling that the order didn’t expire for three days. “It was days before anyone could even drive around. We had to get payloaders to open the roads. This seemed like a small snowfall compared to that.”

During that 2018 storm, Van Scoyoc said one snowplow caught on fire, and a payloader had to be dispatched to quickly clear a private road in Northwest Woods so that an ambulance could get to a woman who was ready to give birth.

According to both Van Scoyoc and Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, as well as Sag Harbor Village Mayor Jim LaRocca, the response to Saturday’s storm by the highway departments, police, emergency services, and public works crew was topnotch, and any potential calamities were avoided, thanks not only to the hard work of individuals in those departments but also the cooperation of the public in staying off the roadways during the storm.

Like Van Scoyoc four years ago, Southampton Town Highway Superintendent Charlie McArdle was also dealing with a big task early on in his tenure. The new superintendent, still in his first month on the job, earned “high marks,” according to Schneiderman, who was in close contact with McArdle and Emergency Operations Manager Ryan Murphy throughout the weekend.

“I went into it concerned, because they were forecasting 2 feet of snow,” Schneiderman said. “And they were calling for high winds, whiteout conditions and potential erosion. Our new highway superintendent did an excellent job.”

Schneiderman said he visited the department to check in on how they were doing in the lead-up to the storm, and stayed in contact with McArdle throughout the day on Saturday, while also going out in his own car — a Jeep with four-wheel drive — to assess conditions on the ground as the storm was in full swing. He had plenty of praise for the department’s handling of the blizzard from start to finish, and said he is happy to have a better working relationship with McArdle than he did with the former highway superintendent, Alex Gregor.

“It’s so important that we can confer about issues, like whether or not to open Town Hall,” Schneiderman said, pointing out that thanks to the hard work of the crews, Town Hall opened at its regular time on Monday morning. “They did a great job keeping everything working under very difficult conditions.”

Schneiderman said the department cleared all the main roads, and had the usual help from private contractors to clear out private roads as well. The town also chipped in and plowed several roadways in Southampton Village, which required a bit of assistance during the storm. Schneiderman added that the Highway Department’s ability to respond to the heavy snowfall was aided by the fact that a heavy duty snowblower that had been inoperable for several years was fixed in time to be used during the storm. That snowblower was used to clear some roadways on Shinnecock Territory in addition to certain parts of the town.

Schneiderman even got his own hands dirty — or, rather, cold and snowy — personally assisting several motorists who had skidded off the road while out driving on Saturday, calling a number of accidents he came across into the police and also helping shovel out some cars that were stuck. Schneiderman said that while the town strongly encouraged residents to stay off the roads, he struck out in his Jeep because he wanted to help people and help the various departments responsible for responding during the storm in identifying any emergency situations.

“I technically provide oversight to the police, and I’m the one who called the state of emergency, so I do have emergency powers,” he said. “I feel that I need to be out there and understand what is going on. I’m pretty careful, too. I’m not going to put myself at risk and get in the way of the plows, but if I can help a few residents in need, then I’ll do that.”

The few residents who ventured out were doing so in conditions that met all the criteria for a blizzard, the first one to hit the area since 2018. To qualify as a blizzard, a snowstorm must meet three crucial conditions, according to Tiffany Fortier, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service: wind gusts of at least 35 mph; those gusts lasting over the course of at least three hours; and visibility of a quarter-mile or less, which counts as “whiteout” conditions. In several East End towns, wind gusts around 50 mph were observed at times.

The storm also met — easily — the criteria for what is called “bombogenesis” or a “bomb cyclone.”

For any mid-latitude cyclone, like a nor’easter, to earn the attention grabbing moniker of a “bomb cyclone,” there needs to be a pressure drop of at least 24 millibars within a 24-hour timeframe, or 1 millibar per hour. Saturday’s storm achieved a drop of 26 millibars in just 12 hours, Fortier said.

“It just rapidly intensified,” she said. “It’s not unusual, it just shows how intense the entire storm was, and why some areas saw close to 30 inches of snow.”

According to NWS services reports, Orient State Park on the North Fork saw the highest snowfall total, with a measurement of 25 inches. Snowfall totals varied across the twin forks, and the light and fluffy nature of the snow, combined with the winds and drifting made it hard to get an exact measurement in certain areas. Fortier said they had a report of 19.2 inches in East Hampton, 22.9 inches in Calverton, and 15.5 inches in Riverhead. Van Scoyoc said at his home in Northwest Woods, they were “certainly in the 20-to-25-inch range,” and added that there were areas in his backyard where the snow drifts “easily” reached 3 feet.

He also had high praise for his Highway Department, under the leadership of Steve Lynch. “They were well prepared and had around 60 plows out,” he said. “They worked extremely long hours under difficult conditions.”

He added he was thankful that the storm, while intense, moved through “fairly quickly,” which helped mitigate any damage from coastal erosion.

“It’s not like it stalled where we had successive high tides, so in that regard we didn’t experience significant flooding,” he said. He was also thankful that the snow, because it was light and fluffy, didn’t accumulate on trees and power lines like it would have if the temperature was closer to the freezing point, which could have led to downed trees and power lines and outages that would have left people without heat over the course of several cold days.

Earlier this week, most roads had been cleared and treated, and life was back to normal after several school districts were either closed or had a delayed opening on Monday. The work that was left was largely snow removal, in areas where it built up, including in the middle of Main Street in Sag Harbor.

Mayor Jim Larocca credited the village crews for clearing the roads quickly and efficiently, and said their final task associated with the blizzard would be transporting the giant piles of snow from Main Street to Havens Beach, where it will be dumped, and Mother Nature will take care of the rest.