There are blizzard warnings for coastal Connecticut and Long Island as a winter storm hits the region.
By Saturday evening, snow was falling at a rate of 3 inches per hour on Long Island. Officials are expecting 24-30 inches of snow. With 40 mph winds, that could lead to dangerous storm surge.
"Personally, I'm more worried about the flooding then the snow. Flooding can do tremendous, tremendous damage,", said Governor Andrew Cuomo, "As we've learned the hard way."
Cuomo said at a press conference at his Manhattan office on Saturday morning that the recovery after 2012’s Superstorm Sandy brought more funding and greater awareness to issues that have caused problems on Long Island in the past, when coastal tidal surge and flooding hit power substations and caused mass outages.
"The physical infrastructure has been changed, the shoreline has been changed," said Cuomo, "There are more berms, there are more barriers to high floods."
As of midday Saturday, there were under 1,000 electricity customers without power on Long Island.
Cuomo has declared a state of emergency and he has issued a travel ban. Non-emergency vehicles have been banned in New York City and on Long Island state roads since 2:30 pm. Metro-North, the Long Island Rail Road, and above-ground parts of the subway system shut down at 4:00 pm.
Thousands of flights have been canceled at JFK and La Guardia airports.
