Snow Causes Power Lines To Sag, Lights To Flicker In Queens

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Mayor Bill de Blasio urged New Yorkers to stay safe Wednesday, as another nor'easter took aim at the Tri-State Area.

"As we've all been seeing, it keeps evolving," de Blasio said. "The storm is certainty arriving later than some of the early projections we had."

Third Nor'easter Possible Monday

"Don't take this for granted," he added. "Take it seriously." 

By nightfall, snow-covered power lines hung precariously in parts of Queens, causing flickering street lights in St. Albans.

"I just got home. The young lady down the street said her lights were blinking on and off," resident Debbie McGriff told CBS2's Andrea Grymes.

Several wires fell near a house on the corner of 205th Street in Jamaica, and police routed traffic around another fallen cable line on nearby Francis Lewis Boulevard.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the state's emergency response efforts will focus on the lower Hudson Valley, New York City and Long Island. New York National Guard members were being deployed to those areas with snowplows, generators and other equipment.

Cuomo urged drivers to avoid travel as much as possible, adding that if travel is necessary, "do so using extreme caution."

The governor also issued a tractor-trailer ban for Interstate 90 from Exit 36 just outside Syracuse to the Albany area, and for Interstate 87 from Albany to the Yonkers-Bronx line. The ban also prohibited tandem trailers, buses, box trucks and other high-profile vehicles from those highways. It also applied to sections of I-81, I-88, I-84, I-684, I-287, I-95 and Route 17.

Late Wednesday night, the first storm-related death was reported in Suffern, New York, where an 88-year-old woman was killed by a falling tree.

(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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