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US snow: Winter Storm Grayson hits the US East Coast with heavy snow
Winter Storm Grayson has left at least one dead in the Northeast and triggered what officials believe is
Massachusett's highest high tide on record as of Thursday.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said flooding from the "historic high tide" prompted the deployment of National Guard high-water rescue vehicles to aid residents and stranded vehicles, the Associated Press reports.
Philadelphia authorities announced a death Thursday as the storm made its sheer power felt by millions.
Local police told AP that a passenger was killed after
a vehicle was unable to stop at the bottom of an icy, steep hill and crashed into a commuter train. The driver managed to escape, but the passenger remained inside as the car went through a gate at the railroad crossing. Police later discovered the body along the tracks.
As tides rose in the afternoon hours, coastal areas saw flooding in addition to the wintry precipitation from the storm.
Storm surge poured into the streets in towns like Scituate, Massachusetts, flooding the roads with partially frozen salt water. In the town of Rockport, The Weather Channel storm tracker Jim Cantore watched as water levels rose quickly Thursday afternoon and threatened to wash away several parked cars that were left behind.
Comment: According to the Weather Channel, Winter Storm Grayson has undergone what meteorologists call bombogenesis, defined by a rapid drop in atmospheric pressure of 24 millibars or more in a period of 24 hours.
In over four decades-worth of data compiled by Dr. Andrea Lopez Lang from SUNY-Albany and David Roth from NOAA's Weather Prediction Center, this bombogenesis rate of 59 millibars in 24 hours through 10 a.m. EST Thursday was a record magnitude for this part of the western Atlantic Ocean, dating to 1976.
According to NOAA's ensemble tracks forecast, Grayson's central pressure will drop further today. For comparison, past Northeast storms such as Nemo (February 2013), Juno (January 2015) and Stella (March 2017) had minimum central pressures in the 970s millibars.
See also: North America enters a freeze so deep even the penguins are panicking