Philadelphia area hit by nor'easter

PHILADELPHIA - November 7, 2012 (WPVI) -- Crews still cleaning up from Superstorm Sandy are now dealing with a nor'easter that brought the first snowflakes of the season to the Philadelphia area.

The storm was expected to bring a combination of wind-blown snow, sleet and freezing rain to eastern Pennsylvania into Thursday morning, with 2 to 4 inches of accumulation possible, the National Weather Service said.

The storm could test utilities and road crews still cleaning up from Sandy, which knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and forced road closures across last week. The latest weather could also possibly delay assessments of damage from Sandy, according to Ruth Miller, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

FirstEnergy and PPL both reported only about 400 customers each without power Wednesday night, and Peco reported only scattered outages. Peco said it had finished restoring power to suburban Philadelphia customers knocked out by Sandy, the worst storm in terms of outages in the company's history The company had 2,000 people out in the field ready to deal with the latest weather, including extra manpower brought in from out of state to deal with Sandy, a spokeswoman said.

"They will continue to stay here until we assess the impact from this weather event," Geus said.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation had 2,200 trucks ready statewide Wednesday and was prepared to salt roadways as needed, according to spokesman Steve Chizmar.

PennDOT still had a few roads closed due to downed wires from Sandy in eastern Pennsylvania, Chizmar said.

"We'll continue to monitor the situation," Chizmar said. "This is pretty much a routine storm."

At Philadelphia International Airport, about 10 percent of flights were canceled Wednesday, mostly due to the high winds that can impact the smaller planes used on regional flights, and the weather also caused some arrival and departure delays, airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica said.

Some schools in the area of Philadelphia and its suburbs closed early or canceled after-school activities.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said the city was carefully tracking the storm and that the Streets Department was prepared with plows and salt if needed. He said he did not expect it to cause major flooding problems, but encouraged citizens to be careful - especially considering the possibility of downed trees and power lines

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