Warmer Air in East Brings Relief but Also a Flood of New Problems

The mid-Atlantic states emerged from a holiday deep freeze Sunday as the nation closed out one of the coldest Decembers on record. But rapidly rising temperatures created new problems: ice jams, flash floods, blinding fog and treacherous highways.

Street flooding was also reported further west in portions of rain-drenched Ohio.

The National Weather Service declared a flash flood watch for nearly all of West Virginia and posted warnings in various portions of the state, where creeks and streams rose with the sudden change to warm and wet weather on the heels of arctic air and heavy Christmas season snowfall.

Ice jams clogged several West Virginia waterways, including the East River in Mercer County, where a 100-yard mass of 10-inch ice created a crude dam that sealed off the stream and drove the river beyond its banks. Four homes were damaged and about 15 people were evacuated to higher ground.

Relatively mild and humid air moving in over frozen ground and melting snow produced pea-soup fog that cut visibility to near zero from northern Virginia to as far as 150 miles north of Philadelphia.

Rain fell onto frozen ground in Pennsylvania and central New Jersey, creating a coat of ice on roadways that made driving hazardous, the weather service said.

The thaw in the mid-Atlantic states did not extend to New England, where a winter storm warning for up to 6 inches of snow was posted for northern New Hampshire and northern and western Maine. Snow was mixed with sleet and freezing rain in the rest of northern New England and Upstate New York.

Rain showers--and thunderstorms, in some places--drenched an area from southern New England and southern New York to the central Gulf Coast region. Mary Esther, Fla., received more than 3 inches of rain Sunday morning.