San Francisco Frontiers - Nor'easter lashes US east with punishing rain and wind

Nor'easters, as storms like these are known, can cause billions of dollars in damage as they bring torrential rain, sometimes snow, strong winds and heavy storm surge flooding to large swaths of the US East Coast.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said Sunday morning that the storm was "slowly weakening" after causing days of havoc up and down the East Coast.

Still, gale warnings were in effect from Delaware to Maine, while an even wider array of states was under coastal flood advisories.

The storm's center swirled off the coast of New Jersey, but clouds associated with the storm stretched far north across New England.

Gusts were topping out around 45 mph (72 km/h), the weather service reported, down from the 81 mph that Montauk Point, New York saw earlier in the storm.

Still, "bands of moderate to heavy rain will continue to rotate around the storm through tonight, with the heaviest rain expected across Long Island, New York City, and southern New England this afternoon and evening," the NWS said.

The storm is expected to float eastward before turning north over the coming days after slowly weakening throughout Sunday and into the evening.

- Days of misery -

Several local media outlets reported that a New York City public housing authority employee was killed Saturday when a tree fell on him while he walked through a parking lot.

Over 130,000 people were without power across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, according to PowerOutage.com, a tracking service.

Misery abounded at the nation's airports, with hundreds of flights canceled and over 2,000 delayed across the country, according to FlightAware.

Boston's Logan International Airport saw 134 cancellations as of Sunday morning, while smaller airports on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard saw more than 25 percent of their flights cancelled.

North Carolina's famed Highway 12, which traces the razor-thin chain of barrier islands off its coast, was washed out this week, stranding some island residents from the mainland. Images shared by the local transportation authority showed chunks of asphalt, reminiscent of earthquake damage, washed over by large waves.

The state's ferry services established an emergency route on Sunday to assist stranded residents on Hatteras Island.

Footage shot up and down the US east coast showed seaside homes battered by large waves while kayakers paddled through flooded city streets.

The US Department of Homeland Security said Saturday it was on standby to send emergency management officials to assist states, if needed.

- Swirling clouds -

Nor'easters take their name from the wind that they bring, which usually comes from the northeast.

In satellite images nor'easters can look strikingly like a hurricane, with spiraling clouds forming over the ocean that span hundreds of miles of coastline.

But the storms are categorically different in how they are formed.

Whereas hurricanes largely form during the warm late summer and early autumn months and draw energy from warm tropical water, nor'easters are more common between September and April and are fueled by the mixing of cold Arctic air blowing from Canada with the relatively warm air found over coastal Atlantic waters.

Y.Gomez--SFF