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  1. #1
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Hundreds stranded on NY highway '13 miles bumper-to-bumper

    '13 miles of bumper-to-bumper' traffic starts to clear

    Snow stranded hundreds on highway near Buffalo overnight



    Vehicles are stranded on the New York State Thruway during a winter storm in Buffalo, N.Y., on Thursday.

    The Associated Press
    updated 1 hour 27 minutes ago 2010-12-02T19:07:11

    BUFFALO, N.Y. — Hundreds of cold and hungry motorists spent hours Thursday stranded on a western New York highway after an accident caused a backup and the idling trucks and cars got stuck in heavy snow.

    A storm that began Wednesday and continued overnight buried parts of Buffalo and its suburbs under 2 feet of snow, but largely spared the downtown. Dozens of schools canceled classes.

    After a truck jackknifed on Interstate 90 on Wednesday evening, police closed the highway about 3 a.m. Thursday when vehicles became backed up and buried in blowing snow, State Trooper Daniel Golinski said. Drivers also were stranded on a 3-mile stretch of Interstate 190.

    Golinski described the scene overnight as "13 miles of bumper-to-bumper cars, two lanes each — three lanes each depending on where they are."

    By midday, parts of I-90 were reopened and the stretch of I-190 reopened shortly afterward.

    But an 11-mile stretch of road along Buffalo's eastern edge remained closed Thursday afternoon, and tractor-trailers remained the primary source of gridlock. Buffalo's mayor issued a driving ban for the city's southern section.

    The snow was expected to shift north through Buffalo during the day.

    Dozens of schools canceled classes Thursday and power remained out for about 10,000 utility customers in eastern New York.

    Jack Geiselman took his 14-hours stranded on the highway in 32-degree weather in stride.

    "I tend not to be a ranter-and-raver about things and the point is, it's nothing I have any control over," the 60-year-old semi-retired civil engineer said. "I guess the way I look at it is, it's over. I guess stuff happens. It's not the end of the world."

    Geiselman was traveling in a Honda Civic from Keene, N.Y., to Cleveland with his black lab Boomer to help his daughter get her house ready for a baby due between Christmas and New Year. He had with him a sleeping bag and plenty of warm clothing and gas. He said state troopers came by with coffee and food for people in cars.

    Emergency crews on ATVs passed out water and protein bars, and buses picked up motorists and delivered them to a shelter at a senior citizen center.

    State Police had no reports of medical emergencies, although one older motorist who uses oxygen was among the stranded and was taken to safety, said Capt. Michael Nigrelli.

    Not to be discouraged, two truck drivers who left their tandems idling in the early morning tramped through the snow for about half a mile to pick up a breakfast sandwich and coffee off the highway. They seemed almost cheerful despite the hit on their livelihood.

    "The wheels are not moving and we're making nothing," said Don Lanphere, 51, a trucker for 32 years who was hauling dog food. "The only guys making money are the plow operators."

    "I had the radio on listening," said Curt Doverspike, 40, a trucker from Jamestown. "They said we should be getting out soon. Nothing ever happened so we just went to bed, woke up this morning. We're just kind of used to it."

    He said regular travelers were venting their frustrations but the truck drivers were calmer.


    Weather.com links Fall allergies Hurricane Central Severe alerts NFL Forecast Airport delays Air quality Rush hour traffic "There's traffic jams, accidents all the time," Doverspike said. "You just get used to it. I guess it's easier for us than those in the cars because they get frustrated. We have a bed. If we get bored, we lay down and go to bed."

    Other truckers left the road to find refuge at truck stops, parking lots and city streets, but most kept their rigs parked on the highway, especially the tandem drivers who, with two trailers behind them, are allowed to get off the highway only at designated exits.

    Matt Welling was hauling a double tractor-trailer full of groceries when traffic came to a standstill. He spent the night "sitting back, playing a little Solitaire on the computer, taking a nap," the Wegmans driver said after more than eight hours stuck on the road.

    "I'm pretty chilly, hungry. A nice cup of coffee would do pretty well right now," he said by cell phone.

    In Cattaraugus County on New York's southwestern edge, flooding was the bigger problem following heavy rain. Two emergency shelters were opened, in Olean and Portville, as the Allegheny River reached moderate flood stage. Between 50 and 100 homes were affected, said Stephanie Timblin, spokeswoman for the county's Office of Emergency Services.

    The river was expected to crest Thursday afternoon and drop overnight.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40471093/ns/weather
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  2. #2
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Winter wonderland grounds Europe's traffic

    Dec 2, 9:08 AM (ET)
    By JUERGEN BAETZ


    Cars are stuck as a wheel loader tries to get the snow off the road during a heavy snow storm near Neu Mukran on the island of Ruegen at the Baltic Sea, northern Germany, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2010. Large parts of Germany were hit by heavy snowfalls and icy winds. (AP Photo/dapd, Jens Koehler)

    BERLIN (AP) - Freezing temperatures and often blinding snowfall shuttered airports across Britain on Thursday, delayed flights across Europe and forced thousands of passengers in Germany to spend the night in trains.

    In neighboring Poland, the cold claimed 10 more lives, bringing the overall number of deaths to 18, Polish police spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski said. He urged Poles to report any homeless or drunk people on the streets to officers in hopes of saving their lives.

    Authorities in Berlin also kept subway stations, soup kitchens and heated buses open all night to provide shelter for the city's homeless.

    Gatwick Airport, one of Britain's busiest, was closed for a second straight day, canceling another 600 flights as conditions continued to deteriorate. Edinburgh Airport and London's City Airport were also closed until late evening, according to the Eurocontrol central control agency's website.


    Cars are stuck on a road during a heavy snow storm near Neu Mukran on the island of Ruegen at the Baltic Sea, northern Germany, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2010. Large parts of Germany were hit by heavy snowfalls and icy winds. (AP Photo/dapd, Jens Koehler)

    The agency also reported significant delays at London Heathrow, Paris' Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam's Schiphol, Berlin's Tegel and Duesseldorf airports.

    In Geneva, the airport was able to reopen after removing 2,000 tractor-trailers full of snow from the airfield.

    Travelers hoping to fare better by road or rail were equally stymied as snow continued to fall across the U.K. and most of Germany, leaving thousands of motorists stranded overnight in freezing temperatures.

    Some 3,000 rail passengers were also stranded overnight and struggled to catch a few minutes' sleep in their trains, German railway operator Deutsche Bahn said.

    Some 200 stranded passengers in Germany's Frankfurt hub spent the night in parked night trains after hotels filled up. Nothing was moving along many of the nation's high-speed train links, such as between Nuremberg and Leipzig in the south and east, or between Hamburg and the Danish capital Copenhagen in the north.


    A car drives in the snowy countryside near Chasne sur Illet, western France, Thursday Dec.2, 2010. Nine regions in northwest and southeast France were put on a weather alert, warning of snow and ice until Thursday morning. SNCF, France's national railway, said traffic on the main southeast routes had been affected by heavy snow, but 80 percent of its high-speed trains were still running.(AP Photo/David Vincent)

    Southeastern Denmark was also badly hit, and heavy snow falls and icy winds severely hampered road and rail traffic across much of the country. The Danish army has been mobilized to help emergency vehicles, using tracked armored personnel carriers to help ambulances and other emergency vehicles cut their way through mounds of snow.

    Heavy snowfall in Poland also disrupted the normal flow of planes and trains and created a treacherous situation on many of the country's already abysmal roads.

    Thousands of Polish homes were left without electricity or heat as temperatures hovered around minus 10 Celsius (14 Fahrenheit). Several Romanian villages suffered a similar fate, while severe ice caused delays to traffic across the nation.

    On many German roads, meanwhile, traffic was chaotic with hundreds of minor accidents due to heavy snowfall. Police in Berlin alone counted 121 accidents Thursday morning, spokesman Burkhardt Opitz said.

    The heavy winter weather has claimed at least two lives in Germany, a 73-year-old in Lower Saxony who was struck by a train why trying to clear snow and an 18-year-old driver in Baden-Wuerttemberg, who lost control of his vehicle on an icy road and crashing head-on into a truck.

    The cold has also taken a solid grip over Sweden, with the lowest temperatures overnight Thursday measuring minus 29.6 Celsius (85.28 Fahrenheit) in Lillhardal in the center of the country. In the Netherlands, a light dusting of snow also led to chaos and long traffic jams on the roads.

    In southeastern Europe, meanwhile, Bosnian authorities declared a state of emergency and ordered evacuations after heavy rainfall caused severe flooding on the Drina river.

    Schools closed, and half of the town has no electricity, city water is no longer drinkable. In nearby Gorazde, the federal army had to help evacuating people.

    ---

    Cassandra Vinograd and Robert Barr in London, Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Frank Jordans in Geneva, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Melissa Eddy in Berlin, Mike Corder in Amsterdam, Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo, Bosnia, contributed to this report.

    http://apnews.myway.com/article/20101202/D9JRQGJO2.html
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  3. #3
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    UPDATE: Heavy Snow Causes Severe Disruption in Europe...

    Shops running out of basics... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -work.html
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