A powerful nor'easter swept into the East Coast early Saturday, packing high winds and heavy rain across a broad stretch of the region. Thousands of customers lost electricity, hundreds of flights were cancelled, and coastal communities from the mid-Atlantic to New England faced the prospect of flooding as the storm stalled offshore and intensified.
The storm's reach was enormous. Tens of millions of people living from the mid-Atlantic up through the coast of Maine sat inside the system's path, according to forecasters with the National Weather Service, who warned that damaging wind gusts, saturated soils and rising waters would combine to produce hazardous conditions well inland from the water's edge.
The story was reported by NPR's Ava Berger and Scott Simon, first published early Saturday morning at 7:38 a.m. Eastern and updated at 12:43 p.m. Eastern, and featured on Weekend Edition Saturday. As the day progressed, the forecast picture remained fluid, with meteorologists expecting conditions to deteriorate further before easing through the weekend.
A nor'easter is a distinct type of Atlantic storm, named for the direction its winds blow — from the northeast — as it churns off the coast. Storms of this kind form when a deepening low-pressure system meets cold air to the north, and they are notorious for delivering prolonged, gusty winds over a wide area, along with heavy precipitation and storm surge along the shoreline. Late September is prime time for them, as the temperature difference between the Arctic and the subtropics widens and coastal lows can stall and intensify.
Photographs from the storm's early stages showed residents doing what officials typically recommend before a strong coastal storm arrives: securing property. In one image, John Garrisi and Gaige Graf moved an outdoor table away from the shorefront on Friday as the weather deteriorated. The photograph, by Robert F. Bukaty of the Associated Press, offered a small glimpse of the individual preparation happening up and down the coast as the storm approached.
The most immediate consequence of the storm's arrival was the loss of electricity. Thousands of households and businesses reported outages, and utility crews across the region braced for an extended restoration effort. Outages of this scale typically follow a combination of wind-damaged lines, snapped poles and felled trees, and they tend to persist in areas where saturated ground makes access to downed equipment difficult.
Aviation was hit hard as well, with hundreds of flights cancelled. Airports serving the mid-Atlantic and New England, including the region's major hubs, suspended or reduced operations as crews worked to clear runways and de-ice aircraft in some cases, leaving travelers to face long delays, rerouted itineraries and cancellations stretching into the coming days.
Flooding was the other defining risk. Nor'easters tend to produce both a rise in water pushed by onshore winds and a surplus of rainfall that overwhelms drains and streams. Low-lying coastal roads, basement levels and shoreline neighborhoods are especially vulnerable, and forecasters have urged residents in flood-prone areas to move vehicles to higher ground and avoid driving through standing water.
At the same time, attention was shifting thousands of miles westward to the Pacific, where Hurricane Nolo was threatening Hawaii with dangerous flooding rains. Nolo, described as a zig-zagging storm, was captured in a Friday satellite image as it approached the islands. Forecasters expected the hurricane to strengthen but to avoid making landfall, while warning that its moisture could still deluge parts of the state.
Hawaii's vulnerability to a storm that does not technically land lies in geography. Heavy rain falling on steep, windward terrain runs rapidly downhill, and after days of accumulation, even a hurricane that stays at sea can send rivers over their banks and trigger flash floods in valleys and gulches. Authorities there have urged residents to stay alert to rain bands well away from the center and to treat warnings seriously even if the eye never arrives.
The overlap of the two storms is unusual enough to draw notice: a major Atlantic windstorm and a strengthening Pacific hurricane affecting U.S. weather in the same news cycle, on opposite sides of the country and in opposite seasons from one another. It underscores how many regions can be under simultaneous weather threat, from New England harbors to Hawaiian neighborhoods.
Residents and officials across the East Coast were advised to secure loose outdoor items, avoid unnecessary travel, and monitor local emergency management alerts as the storm continued. Forecasters expected significant wind and rain to persist throughout the weekend.
The questions now are how much additional wind the system delivers before it moves out, where the heaviest rain bands settle, and how quickly power can be restored to the tens of millions in its path. Forecasters cautioned that the storm's slow-moving nature means impacts could last through the weekend even as skies begin to brighten, and that coastal flooding in particular may peak after the strongest winds have eased.
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