Get ready to hear a lot of, "A snowstorm? Don't we have enough to deal with?"
Forecasters say a nor'easter packing lots of snow and a stiff wind will move through Connecticut slowly, from Wednesday afternoon through midday Thursday. That slow movement will give it time to drop between 12 and 18 inches of snow in New Haven and along the Connecticut coastline, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), which has issued a Winter Storm Warning for most of Connecticut.
Central Connecticut, including Hartford, is likely to see less snow-- NWS predicts a still significant 8-to-12 inches. Forecasts, of course, vary, and on Tuesday, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin cited one that calls for 12-to-16 inches in the capital.
Bronin says that a parking ban will take effect at 6 pm Wednesday, and all Hartford Public Schools students will be learning remotely on Thursday.
"It looks like it's going to be a pretty big one," said the mayor, during an afternoon news conference at Hartford City Hall. "It's also going to be a long, slow moving storm."
As crews started to treat state highways with salt brine in preparation for the storm, Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) Commissioner Joe Giulietti told reporters he's dealing with a staffing problem related to the wider crisis of the moment: the pandemic. He says about 100 CTDOT workers are sidelined with COVID-19.
"We've always used contractors to supplement on a major storm," said Giulietti, "but we're now engaging a lot more contractors, because we know that we are going to need them in a storm like this, and it's our way of augmenting the force that's there."
