"The Morning Call Inc., Copyright 2002"
Date: Mar. 14, 1984
WINTER TAKES ONE MORE SHOT
The Morning Call
The Lehigh Valley yesterday slogged through some of the messiest meteorological goop old man winter has dished out this season. And for the most part, residents took the winter blitz in stride.
Storm conditions caused a disruption in power to 895 customers in Bethlehem Township yesterday afternoon, but a Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. spokesman said it was the only major power outage in the Lehigh Valley service area.
A PP&L crew dispatched to the area following the 4:48 p.m. outage discovered a tree weighted with ice that had fallen on a power line along Oakland Road near Route 191, causing the disruption in service, the spokesman said.
The power outage affected customers in the Oakland and Hecktown roads area and along the Route 191 commercial district up to Route 22.
Power was restored at 6:05 p.m., the spokesman said.
Charles Giannetta of the National Weather Service at Allentown-Bethlehem- Eas ton Airport said the culprit was an area of low pressure that formed over southern New Jersey and moved slowly up the coast. Snow began falling at 2:40 a.m. yesterday and by early morning, a one-inch covering made driving hazardous. A travelers' advisory was posted and remained in effect throughout the night.
Local school districts, including Allentown, Catasauqua, East Penn, Bethlehem, Saucon Valley, Southern Lehigh, Parkland, Northampton, Nazareth, Easton and Wilson Area, and schools in the Allentown Diocese canceled classes. For Bethlehem and Saucon Valley, yesterday's closing used the last alloted snow day for the year. Extra snow days, however, are built into the Easter holidays in both districts.
Conditions began to deteriorate at 11:15 a.m. when freezing rain began to fall and noon-4:30 p.m. the valley was pelted by a steady shower of sleet.
By 7 p.m., Giannetta said precipitation reached .48 of an inch in the form of a heavy mixture of sleet, snow and freezing rain with about .13 of an inch falling as snow.
Accumulation at A-B-E had reached three inches ''with a heck of a nice glaze from the freezing rain.'' He expected temperatures to hover around the low 30s during the night with freezing rain continuing until midnight. The rain that was predicted to continue throughout the night should end this morning with temperatures rising above freezing after 9 a.m.
Allentown police reported a few minor fender benders, but said for the most part ''people were basically using their heads.'' State police at Bethlehem reported little traffic and no weather related accidents.
While most of the Lehigh Valley hoped yesterday's storm was the season's curtain call, Giannetta said we have ''at least another four weeks to go before we're out of the threat of anything. But anything that comes now won't last long.''
He added that an area of higher pressure moving in from the south would bring clearing and temperatures of 60 tomorrow and throughout the weekend.
Mark DeTurk, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation assistant manager for Northampton County, said road crews were to be stationed throughout the county through this morning to keep all state roads passable.
But, DeTurk said, ''motorists must take the utmost caution'' because of slushy conditions and heavy water runoff expected to follow with today's projected warmer temperatures.
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"WEATHER BY GIANNETTA"