Season’s Strongest Storm Rips Atlantic Seaboard

The strongest winter storm of the season lashed the Atlantic seaboard Wednesday, flooding rivers and coastal areas and dumping more than a foot of snow in parts of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

The storm, a classic nor’easter, pounded beaches in Virginia and the Carolinas with strong winds and heavy surf and carried Atlantic moisture hundreds of miles inland, where it fell as rain, sleet and wet snow in areas still digging out from a severe winter storm last week.

“I thought we got rid of that snow devil last week. He came back to haunt us again,” Ed Mullins said as he scraped a fresh 6-inch layer of snow off his car in Beckley.

About 6,900 people in the remote southern corner of West Virginia were still without power a week after a similar storm dumped up to 4 feet of snow in the central Appalachians.

National Guard troops in Humvees were called in to rescue hundreds of people, including the Cookville, Tenn., high school basketball team, stranded overnight in cars, trucks and buses along the Cumberland Plateau. Snow and ice shut a 30-mile stretch of Interstate 40 west of Knoxville, Tenn.

In Georgia, two people were killed in separate accidents on rain-soaked roads.

The same storm spawned tornadoes Monday in Florida and brought high winds and heavy rain. The system intensified over the mid-Atlantic region, spreading precipitation as far west as the Ohio Valley.

“What we have now is a very active southern jet stream picking up moisture both in the Gulf and the Atlantic,” National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Rusnak said.

“It’s theorized that this could be [a result of] El Nino,” he said, referring to the weather pattern marked by an unusual warming of water off the Pacific Coast of South America and linked to unstable weather around the world.

On the Atlantic Coast, flood warnings were posted from Little River Inlet, N.C., to Sandy Hook, N.J. In Virginia Beach, heavy rain and 50 mph winds swept across the city’s concrete boardwalk. The beach areas will see heavy rains until the storm moves out to sea tonight.