Spring nor'easter rips through area

The rare spring nor'easter that lashed the region with hurricane-force winds yesterday created havoc on the roads, knocked down trees and power lines, and chewed up beaches at the Shore.

About 110,000 people, from Chester and Delaware Counties to the hardest-hit areas along the Shore, endured power failures yesterday.

Atlantic City Electric reported that more than 48,000 people lost power in Atlantic, Cape May and Salem Counties, and Peco said that 50,000 customers were without electricity in Pennsylvania.

Most service interruptions were due to tree limbs on power lines.

Wind gusts reached a hurricane-strength 78 m.p.h. in Ocean City and 72 m.p.h. in Sea Isle City. At Philadelphia International Airport, where more than 130 flights were delayed or canceled yesterday, they were 49 m.p.h.

With a high of 49, yesterday was the coolest May 12 in Philadelphia since 1882.

John Battaglia, who lives in an oceanfront house in Sea Isle City, Cape May County, said the winds after midnight on Monday sounded like the "proverbial freight train," and the house, which is on pilings, shook so much that a television was knocked off a shelf.

"We thought about evacuating, but it was blowing so hard outside by then that we figured we better stay in," he said.

Cape May County officials declared a limited state of emergency through 10 a.m. today but did not order evacuations.

"There's flooding on all the barrier islands," said Francis McCall, the county's emergency management director. "People have left on their own, but it wasn't mandatory."

In Wildwood, authorities declared a state of emergency and closed schools.

Local fire departments at the Shore rescued drivers on flooded roads and high wind blew parts of a roof off an Atlantic County warehouse.

Authorities reported no injuries or deaths in the region, however.

Route 30, a major artery into Atlantic City, was closed for most of the day because of backbay flooding.

Ocean Drive in Strathmere, Upper Township, also was closed.

The Ninth Street Bridge in Ocean City, another major artery, was closed. And eastbound traffic on the Route 72 causeway onto Long Beach Island was blocked after winds toppled a box truck.

In the roiling seas, the Coast Guard rescued two people from a research boat that began to break apart off the Delaware Coast yesterday morning.

The weather prevented rescuers from searching for a woman who went overboard from a cruise ship about 7:50 p.m. on Sunday. The Norwegian Dawn, en route to Bermuda from New York City, was 45 miles northeast of Atlantic City when the passenger fell overboard.

The woman's name and home town were not released by the cruise line or the Coast Guard yesterday.

Fewer than two weeks before Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of the summer season, beach erosion was significant, said James Eberwine, the marine specialist at the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.

Coastal storms are common in winter, but what was being dubbed the "Mother's Day Storm of 2008" behaved as though it had wandered into the wrong season.

"It's very unusual to get it in May," Eberwine said.

In winter, the temperature contrasts help generate well-organized storms.

In late spring, the sun's energy is more evenly distributed, the contrasts tend to weaken, and rainfall becomes more showery.

The nor'easter - so named for the onshore winds it generates out of the northeast - was spawned by a storm in the Ohio Valley that transferred its energy to the Southeast coast, Eberwine said. It moved slowly northeast yesterday.

"It's a perfect setup for bringing up this kind of wind and wave action and tidal flooding," he said.

It's a setup that's common in winter - but not in May.