East Coast feels brunt of a major nor’easter

A nor’easter battered the East with wind and rain Sunday, grounding hundreds of airline flights, downing power lines and threatening coastal flooding.

The storm flooded people out of their homes in the middle of the night in West Virginia and trapped others. Some New Jersey shore residents evacuated, and officials in Connecticut urged some residents along the Long Island Sound to do the same. Inland areas from eastern New York to Maine faced a threat of heavy snow.

One person was killed in South Carolina as dozens of mobile homes were destroyed or damaged by wind, and two died in car accidents -- one in New York and one in Connecticut. The storm system already had been blamed for five deaths on Friday in Kansas and Texas.

Coastal flood watches were posted from Maryland to Maine through at least this morning.

More than 5.5 inches of rain fell in the New York region Sunday, shattering the record for the date of 1.8 inches set in 1906, according to the National Weather Service. Meteorologist Gary Conte said Sunday night’s high tide was likely to bring coastal flooding on Long Island and in parts of New York City.

In New York, flooding stalled traffic along parkways and forced residents in at least one Queens neighborhood to paddle through streets in boats. In the coastal Seagate section of Brooklyn, which suffered major flooding in a December 1992 nor’easter, residents placed sandbags in the streets.

Airlines canceled more than 400 flights at the New York area’s three major airports, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority.

The storm forced the postponement of six major league baseball games Sunday -- the most in a single day in a decade.