Northeast Storm Causes Highway Wrecks, Keeping Police And Plows Busy

Dec. 17--The first flakes fell on Lackawanna County around 2 p.m. Wednesday

As the region's first major snowstorm of the season gained momentum, plows and police just tried to keep up. Wrecks closed parts of Interstate 81 and 80 in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties briefly as night fell. Speed limits on both roads were reduced to 45 mph and most commercial vehicles were banned from highways while the storm continued to dump inch after inch of snow.

Early in the day, the National Weather Service hiked total snow estimates for Northeast Pennsylvania, but time will tell if the snow totals reach the predicted 18 to 24 inches.

By 7 p.m., the Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport logged 3 inches of snow, according to AccuWeather senior meteorologist Dave Bowers. Snow is expected to continue falling all night and this morning, as fast as 3 inches an hour. The wind will blow east to northeast at 10 to 20 mph, the weather service said. Gusts may reach 30 mph, causing blowing snow and isolated power outages.

"It's better just to hunker down and stay home," AccuWeather senior meteorologist Carl Erickson said.

At 7:30 p.m., Lackawanna County Emergency Management Director David Hahn said "everything is kind of nice and slow," but added that county officials were prepared to take on the worst of the storm overnight.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation mobilized its 200 plows across Lackawanna, Luzerne, Wyoming, Susquehanna, Wayne and Pike counties, according to PennDOT spokeswoman Jessica Kalinoski.

Scranton is under an emergency declaration until 6 p.m. Friday. Parking will be restricted in the central business district from Jefferson Avenue to Mifflin Avenue and Lackawanna Avenue to Olive Street.

The Scranton Police Department on Tuesday asked residents to refrain from moving snow onto a neighbor's property. In a statement, they noted two city ordinances and a state law preventing people from shoveling snow into the street and from putting objects on the street to hold parking spaces. Many other municipalities in the county asked residents to follow snow parking guidelines to allow plows to remove snow from roads efficiently.

Crowds of people hoping to stock up in advance flocked to area grocers to pick up the essentials.

Joe Fasula, co-owner of nine Gerrity's Supermarkets in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties, estimated that the stores on Tuesday doubled or tripled the amount of business it would normally do on a normal day, but had already started ramping up inventory for the holidays.

"It's hard to predict how it will play out," Fasula said. "We've never had a snowstorm in a pandemic before."

The snow should stop accumulating sometime between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. today, Erickson said.

Then it will be time to clean up.

Contact the writer: [email protected], 570-348-9100 ext. 5187; @jkohutTT on Twitter.

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