AccuWeather's Bill Wadell reported live from Long Island, which was just one of many areas dealing with flooding and other storm impacts along the East Coast on Dec. 11.
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00:00Very wet in the northeast, we'll be monitoring the situation all along the east coast here.
00:05Jeff, let's take it right out to you.
00:06All right, yeah. You can see the forum there to the right as well.
00:09Some familiar scenes for some.
00:11And here we have Bill Waddell in West Hampton Beach.
00:15This area's been hammered by wind and rain this evening.
00:17And activist Bill Waddell joins us now from West Hampton Beach.
00:20Bill, that summertime hot spot is kind of a mess tonight.
00:25Yeah, it really is, Jeff. Barely seeing any drivers out here tonight.
00:29Most of the families listening to the warnings and the advice, just hunkering down, staying home.
00:34Not wanting to deal with this rain or the wind.
00:36You can see, we're seeing quite a bit of this here in the Hamptons.
00:39Standing water and ponding right along some of the streets leading to the beaches.
00:43Now, earlier today here on Long Island, we were seeing wind gusts 30, some reports above 50 miles an hour at times.
00:51The big focus, just this funnel of moisture, essentially an atmospheric river.
00:56It's linked back all the way to the tropics, nearly 2,000 miles away.
01:00Bringing in not just mild or muggy air, but all of this rain and all of the problems that come with it.
01:06Check out the new video back into AccuWeather.
01:08And you can see the ponding and the street flooding that we have been encountering tonight here in the Hamptons.
01:13This is the reason why officials have been urging people to slow down and to stay off the roads if you can.
01:20This flooding and street ponding, this can be incredibly tough to see,
01:24especially when you're driving in very dark areas like we've been encountering here in the Hamptons.
01:29Hydroplaning is a big concern on the roads.
01:32We did see some trouble on Interstate 80 earlier today over in New Jersey.
01:37State police had to block lanes near Bud Lake after a driver lost control on the wet highway.
01:43Crews have been busy throughout the day, not just responding to spin-outs and crashes,
01:48but also other road crews have been busy clearing leaves out of drains to prevent clogs with all of this rain.
01:56Now, just a few weeks ago, it was brush fires that were making headlines here in New York and New Jersey.
02:03Dozens of them.
02:04And there are areas still, both here in New York and New Jersey, that are facing pockets of severe and extreme drought, Jeff.
02:12But again, all of this rain moving in, at least that's the good news with this.
02:16Yes, we're dealing with some flooding.
02:18We're dealing with issues and problems on the roads.
02:20But at the end of the day, this rain is beneficial.
02:23It's going to help put a dent into the drought situation here in this part of the Northeast.
02:27Well, thank you for reporting there, Bill.
02:29I know it's been a long day of driving and fighting through some nasty travel weather there.
02:33We spoke with the New York City Department of Environmental Quality there.
02:38They keep an eye on the reservoirs.
02:40They're optimistic about improvements coming, obviously, on the heels of this into the Catskills over the next several days.
02:46Let's take a look at what's going on in West Hampton Beach here.
02:49We saw that from Bill.
02:50And overall, as we look at radar, soaking rain is continuing to fall through this whole area from New York City,
02:57the Brooklyn Bridge, all the way east into Suffolk County there.
03:01And a quick look at radar shows we have Bill's area circled there, West Hampton Beach.
03:05He's out there in the east-central parts of Long Island, eastern Long Island.
03:08And the rain is just pretty incessant here.
03:10We've had a couple of lightning strikes not far from the coast of Rhode Island and areas near Newport.
03:15But overall, the rain is the main issue here, rain and wind with very limited lightning.
03:21And we have been dealing with still every acre of New Jersey facing a steady rain right now.
03:26I don't think there's any dry real estate in Delaware right now.
03:30You can see the radar site there, that little dot on the map near Dover.
03:34But it's raining there as well.
03:36And we have rain through southern parts of the southeast part of Virginia too.
03:40So, again, soaking rain and wind are the main concerns.
03:43Let's take a look at these power outage numbers.
03:45As we take you up into areas around Massachusetts now, we're on the list here with 12,500 addresses in the dark
03:50and 15,000 addresses in the dark into North Carolina.
03:54The wind is the culprit there.
03:56Our wind shift, there's a prefrontal trough moving into areas near Newport, Rhode Island right now.
04:02That's where you see that first most obvious straight line.
04:05The true front is actually moving through New York City.
04:07That's the secondary one.
04:09It's a little less obvious.
04:10That's the wind shift.
04:11So we have a band of heavy rain and wind and then also the true front bringing us some strong winds.
04:17We're gusting to 47 miles per hour in Boston.
04:19If that were sustained, that would be tropical storm force.
04:22And the temperatures are up here, 61 in Boston.
04:25You are by far the warmest spot here on the regional map.
04:28Still holding at 30 now in Pittsburgh.
04:30We lost another degree or two.
04:32It's getting cold in western PA.
04:34That's from west to east.
04:35So it's snowing in parts of Tennessee.
04:38We have rain about 200 miles north of Maine.
04:41It's not about how far north you are with this setup.
04:43It's how far west or east.
04:45The cold is coming from the west.
04:47The warmth is present to the east with that really abundant flow from the south.
04:50Lots of moisture is present.
04:52And this really steps away to the east here.
04:54But the rain is still falling.
04:56This is an atmospheric river event with a connection to the western part of the Caribbean here
05:01driving that warmth and the moisture in with 2 to 4 inches of rain plus snow melt.
05:06We're going to see a lot of areas face some minor river flooding.
05:09And the wind is driving these outages now up into parts of southeast Massachusetts.
05:13Gusts of 50 plus miles per hour for some.
05:15And as the winds continue to blow, as the storm evolves and moves offshore,
05:20we'll be dealing with regional power outages right along the immediate New England coast.
05:24Now, Bree, we're dealing with some colder air.
05:27And the lake effect snow is going to be a big story here to the west.