Paul Bass Photo
The citywide parking ban is over as of noon Tuesday, as the city moves into the final phase of cleaning up after the latest snowstorm.
That’s the word from the final storm briefing, held Tuesday morning at the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in the bowels of the 200 Orange St. government office building.
Libraries are open Tuesday, as are after-school activities. Senior centers closed because of a problem with delivering food.
The city has tagged over 580 cars for violating the parking ban in this storm. It hasn’t been able to tow each one yet because it hit capacity in some storage yards.
While continuing to plow streets, public works crews are also depositing salt and clearing away slush in hopes of preventing ice from accumulating on roads.
Tuesday night at 11 crews plan to start carting away huge mounds of snow that have accumulated at intersections, said public works chief Jeff Pescosolido. The city will also consider emergency towing overnight if it can’t widen the path enough to accommodate emergency vehicles on “a handful of” tight streets in East Rock and Hill; that’ll depend if plow crews can make enough headway during the day Tuesday when neighbors have driven their cars to work. The city has not yet identified particular streets.
Throughout the briefing, officials noted “a few more inches” of snow are expected to fall Thursday, then possibly more than that Sunday night into Monday.
Mayor Toni Harp thanked officials for their departments’ hard work in the storm, saying the clean-up is not a “solo” effort.
“It is an orchestra,” she said. “All you came together and played your parts so well. This was a difficult storm.”
“Keep your spirits high,” Harp added. “There’s going to be more snow. We’re going to be together again.”
Earlier versions of this story follow:
Renewed Snow Makes Rush Hour A Mess
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Harries (left) and Clark (right): Likely to be a delay in opening schools tomorrow. Updates forthcoming tomorrow morning.
The latest winter storm geared back up just in time to make rush hour a dangerous mess.
“You struggle all day, and you can lose your streets in a matter of an hour and a half,” city public works chief Jeff Pescosolido said at a 4 p.m. briefing in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) below the government office building at 200 Orange St.
Officials at the briefing said they expect another 2 – 3 inches of snow to fall by early evening on top of the 7 – 8 inches that fell overnight, before the storm turned to sleet in the morning and tapered off.
Originally forecasters predicted that freezing rain would fall in the morning. Instead, the city got first sleet, then fluffy snow, which enabled plow crews to make steady progress clearing the streets, Pescosolido said.
Until the snow started back up in force mid-afternoon. Now the crews are back playing catch-up.
The city has towed 415 cars for defying a parking ban since the storm began, reported city transit chief Doug Hausladen. He noted that the city has a capacity to store 432 towed cars.
Only one power outage had been reported in town since the storm began.
The latest forecasts called for another snowfall of 4 inches or so on Thursday; then two separate storms over the weekend, dropping 1 to 3 inches on Saturday, another 3 – 5 inches on Sunday.
Welcome to winter.
As of 4:30 p.m., officials were still discussing plans for school on Tuesday — it appeared likely that school would be delayed. A final decision is to be announced by 5 a.m. (UPDATE: SCHOOL OPENINGS WERE DELAYED TWO HOURS TUESDAY.) There was also discussion about possibly lifting the downtown parking ban at 6 a.m. Tuesday, then having it resume overnight, from 2 to 6 a.m.; while keeping the neighborhood odd-side ban in place. Those details had not yet been decided. Stay tuned for updates.
Update: The downtown parking ban will be lifted at 6 a.m. Tuesday morning, encompassing the area bordered by Howe Street, Martin Luther King Boulevard, State Street and Grove Street. Cars can park in public lots, including school lots until then. Superintendent Garth Harries and Chief Operating Officer Will Clark said that if they decide to open schools tomorrow, they will likely be able to accommodate the extra cars.
“We could park around them,” Harries said at the meeting.
The ban on parking on odd-numbered sides of all other streets (beyond downtown) remains in effect.
Tweed-New Haven Airport is scheduled to reopen at noon Tuesday. Buses and trains have been running late.
Mayor Toni Harp stood up to give the team some “sad news” at the meeting’s end: “In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, the groundhog saw his shadow. As a result, we’ll probably be down here [in the EOC] a lot.”
An earlier version of this story follows:
Black Ice Is Threat In 2nd Winter Storm
Paul Bass Photo
Buses are running on the regular weekday schedule.
In this winter’s second storm, it’s not the snow that may thwart travelers, but the freezing rain.
City officials gathered at the Emergency Operations Center Monday morning for updates on the storm, which began Sunday night a week after Winter Storm Juno dropped a foot of snow on the city’s doorstep. This time, New Haven can expect five to eight inches of snow.
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Officials at Monday’s EOC storm update.
Freezing rain predicted for the afternoon combined with dropping temperatures may form black ice, creating dangerous conditions for people returning from work, said Rick Fontana, emergency management chief. The parking ban started at 1 a.m. Monday morning and will continue indefinitely — officials will make a judgement toward the tail end of the storm later Monday afternoon, he said.
Jeff Pescosolido, head of public works, said his staff has been salting the roads. The snow is “peeling off the roads really nice,” without much negative impact from the sleet, he said. The parks department has a “full contingent” working on clearing sidewalks, said Director Becky Bombero.
Transportation staff had towed 220 cars as of Monday’s meeting for defying to parking ban, said Doug Hausladen, the department’s director. They will continue to ticket and tow cars throughout the day until the parking ban is lifted. The parking ban is also in effect downtown, he said, unlike late last week.
New Haven public schools are closed, and school lots are open for public use. So are the Granite Square and Winchester (Science Park) garages (for free) and the Temple Street Garage (tor $3 a day through the storm).
The downtown Ives and Westville Mitchell branch libraries are set to open at noon. The Hill Wilson and Fair Haven branches are to remain closed.
Tweed-New Haven Airport has canceled all Monday flights.
Really?
I thought the biggest threat to the citizens was city hall not figuring out how to use million of dollars of new equipment to plow downtown adequately for the Monday workday.