Friday, November 14, 2003

By Michelle K. Massie, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A cold front that swept through Western Pennsylvania Wednesday night and yesterday, leaving thousands without power, knocking down trees, whipping pedestrians about and toppling newspaper boxes, should be gone by tomorrow.

	Workers cut up a pine tree that fell on a van parked on Margaret Morrison Street on the CMU campus. No one was injured. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

Officials from AccuWeather in State College said the high winds and chaotic weather were the result of the season's first lake-effect storm, which started over the Great Lakes and is making its way to New England.

A cold front slammed into warmer weather and caused a hodgepodge of weather conditions from high winds to thunderstorms to snow flurries. The Pittsburgh region saw its share of just about everything yesterday, including wind gusts of up to 55 mph and snow showers accompanied by thunder.

"A cold front of this strength can cause just about all of these conditions," said Bernie Rayno, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather. "October and November are transition months. This kind of weather is expected."

While temperatures hovered in the mid-30s most of yesterday -- although, according to AccuWeather, at 12:02 a.m. the temperature was 51 degrees, the high for the day -- Sunday is expected to bring a high in the lower 50s, which Rayno said is normal for this time of year.

Allegheny Power had about 30,000 customers without power yesterday, most of them in Butler, Armstrong, Westmoreland, Fayette, Greene and Washington counties, said spokesman Allen Staggers.

Some 12,000 Duquesne Light customers were without power shortly after midnight yesterday, said spokesman Joe Balaban. That number shrunk to 2,000 around 8 a.m. and fluctuated throughout the day.

"It's been a hectic day," he said. "We're chasing wherever the wind has done its damage. We'd restore power for about 16,000 customers in one neighborhood, and it would get knocked out in another neighborhood."

A spokesperson for First Energy said about 2,000 customers in Cranberry and Mercer who are served by its Penn Power subsidiary were in the dark.

Strong winds with gusts of around 60 mph knocked down power lines across Pennsylvania, knocking out power to more than 200,000 utility customers statewide, The Associated Press reported.

The Allegheny County Airport Authority reported no major disruptions at Pittsburgh International Airport. US Airways had slight delays on about 20 outbound flights to areas also affected by high winds yesterday, including New York and Washington, D.C., said spokeswoman Amy Kudwa. No inbound flights to Pittsburgh were delayed.

Several schools in the region closed yesterday or ended the day early because of the weather. Included were Eisenhower Elementary and Fort Couch Middle schools in the Upper St. Clair School District, West Newton Elementary in the Yough School District in Westmoreland County, all four schools in the Sharon School District in Mercer County and Schiller Classical Academy on Pittsburgh's North Side.

Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Oakland closed early yesterday when several panes of glass were blown out.

No injuries were reported from the storm.

"It's the whole purpose of a cold front to cause misery," said Ray Visneski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

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