By Leah Willingham
BOSTON — A powerful nor’easter battered the Northeast again on Sunday, flooding coastal communities and leaving tens of thousands of homes and businesses without power as forecasters warned that another round of high tides could inundate vulnerable shorelines.
The slow-moving storm, which killed a New York City housing authority worker when a tree fell Saturday, was expected to linger through Sunday with heavy rain, strong winds and dangerous surf from New Jersey to New England.
The storm remained just south of Long Island and east of northern New Jersey on Sunday morning and was expected to loop around the area for roughly another 24 hours, said Bob Oravec, a lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.
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The worst of the remaining rainfall was expected Sunday from northern New Jersey through New York City and Long Island into southern New England. The storm was gradually weakening, Oravec said, but the threat of tidal flooding would linger through high-tide cycles Sunday morning and again in the evening.
“The most impactful parts of the storm are likely going to be the high winds and the tidal flooding,” Oravec said.
The nor’easter triggered memories of Superstorm Sandy, which left behind over $60 billion in damage across the eastern U.S. in 2012. While this storm’s impact has been nowhere near that, it could be the first of several along the East Coast this fall because of an El Niño climate pattern that’s disrupting this year’s weather.
More than 130,000 customers were without power across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic Sunday morning, according to PowerOutage.us.
The most widespread outages were along the New Jersey shore, New York’s Long Island and coastal counties in Connecticut. Toppled trees across Long Island damaged homes and cars, blocked streets and downed numerous utility lines.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said response coordination centers in impacted regions were operating at an “enhanced posture,” and teams were on standby in New England in case of widespread outages.
On Saturday in New Jersey and New York, some people kayaked down flooded streets. Others headed to beaches to try to surf the higher-than-usual waves. Emergency crews in Sea Bright, New Jersey, rescued a woman and her dog after their vehicle became trapped in floodwaters, ABC7 reported.
In Surf City, New Jersey, water rose inside a marina where workers had moved equipment to higher ground, and owner Kenny Formica said customers reported boats and Jet Skis missing or blown from their lifts. In Norfolk, Virginia, floodwaters left passing cars pushing wakes through some streets.
The storm also disrupted travel throughout the region. Hundreds of flights were canceled at Boston Logan International Airport, while flooding cut off highway access to North Carolina’s Hatteras Island, stranding visitors and forcing one couple to scramble to relocate their wedding after most of their roughly 45 guests were unable to reach the island.
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AP journalist Julie Walker contributed from New York.
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