New England began to dig out after a winter storm Monday.
The region had been under winter storm warning affecting 12.5 million people stretching from Central New York to Maine. Much of Maine’s Eastern shoreline remains under a storm or blizzard warning as of Monday evening.
Maine received the brunt of the snowfall totals in the region. Portland International Jetport had canceled all flights starting Sunday night, but resumed service Monday night. Snow totals generally ranged between a foot and foot-and-a-half across Maine, while areas of central Maine, including Waterville, received as much as two feet.
Dean Gilbert, a resident of Freeport, Maine, took this time-lapse video of the mounds of snow rising on his deck Sunday night.
In Massachusetts, the storm was generally light on snow but heavy with wind. Gusts reached 50-60 mph on the state’s coasts.
In addition, high wind warnings were in place for Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker warned of power outages from the wet, heavy snow.
“I think that’s probably the single biggest issue, along with the icing of the roads as the weather gets colder, that we are worried about,” Baker said in an interview with CNN affiliate WBZ.
As a coastal front intensifies, freezing temperatures, cooler air and more snow are expected for Connecticut up through Maine until Tuesday evening, meteorologists said.
The winter storm was the second such weather incident in the past week, as New York and New England was hit with more than a foot of snow in some areas on Thursday and Friday.
West Coast gets drenched
The West Coast continues to grapple with rapid snow melt and heavy rains in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which led to flooding in parts of Nevada and Southern California last week.
In Northern California, recent rainfall totals have reached record highs in the Bay Area. The National Weather Service has called this the wettest winter season there in more than 100 years.
The service issued a flood warning Monday for Northern California for residents of Redding down through Modesto.
To help disperse the water build-up in the area, officials opened the Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway for the first time Sunday.
The Oroville Dam is the tallest dam in the United States.
Alarm bells went off after authorities found a hole in the dam’s spillway.
Nearly 200,000 residents living downstream from the dam were forced to evacuate their homes Sunday.
Residents will be happy to learn the area will remain dry throughout the week until the next storm system begins to move out of the Pacific on Thursday, meteorologists said.
