Hochul briefing on incoming blizzard

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — “Stay home tomorrow” was Gov. Kathy Hochul’s main message to eastern and central New York Monday. The developing nor’easter will bring anything from a few inches to two feet in many areas.

Governor Hochul spoke on what she called the “epic event” outside of the Department of Transportation Garage in Albany. She stood alongside leaders from around the area to talk about the state’s preparedness, and to encourage New Yorkers to help the response teams by staying off the roads.

Anticipating power losses and rough roads for most of Tuesday, Hochul encouraged New Yorkers to prepare now. “There’s no reason in the world to have plans to be out tomorrow,” she said. Utility trucks, the national guard, and other responders are setting up to deploy once the weather starts getting bad.

Local leaders said that the Department of Transportation and other organizations have been preparing over the past few days. To help amplify the message of staying home and preparing, a State of Emergency will go into effect at 8 p.m. Monday.

“We’re no strangers to snow,” Hochul said about living upstate. “But we also want to make sure that complacency doesn’t sit in. That is our biggest fear.”

She added that the weather will definitely cause some to lose power. She said to stock up on batteries and other supplies and make a plan to keep warm and calm in the event of an outage. “When you have snow that’s 50% heavier than normal—this is not the light, fluffy, pretty Christmas snow,” Hochul said. “This is going to come down like a brick, and it is that weight that causes a problem.”

Areas getting one-and-a-half feet of snow will experience outages as if they’d gotten three feet, due to this weight, she explained. Given these conditions, those that lose power may have to wait a few days to get it restored, as the storm will continue into Wednesday morning for some regions.

There’s a severe winter storm warning in effect from Monday at 5 p.m. to Wednesday at 8 a.m. in: