North Shore preparing for blizzard

Local officials are in preparation mode as a snowstorm is forecast to bring blizzard conditions and as much as 2-3 feet of snow to the area Monday and Tuesday.”We had a little test storm over the weekend, which was good; we ironed out some of the kinks,” Swampscott Public Works director Gino Cresta said Sunday evening. “We have a couple of pieces of equipment down that we’ll be working on (Monday). I ordered another 150 tons of salt; we went through 120 over the weekend.”The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings Sunday and said between 20 and 30 inches of snow could fall from Monday evening until the storm winds down Wednesday morning. Winds over 30 mph with gusts as high as 75 mph are expected in coastal areas, and up to 80 mph gusts on Cape Cod and nearby islands.”One of the things that will be making this such a problem is the duration of the event,” said Alan Dunham, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Taunton. “Usually they are out in 18 hours, but you are looking at 24 hours plus for this storm.”He said major travel corridors are going to be “severely impacted,” and power outages can be expected from wet, heavy snow combined with strong winds.Lynn Public Works commissioner Andy Hall said that all hands will be on deck for the storm, with 50 workers at the department doing everything from answering phones to plowing the roads along with more than 200 contract employees.The work continues what was 24 hours straight of work of trying to deal with the snow over the weekend.”We didn’t declare a parking ban, which wasn’t a hugely popular move,” Hall said Sunday, explaining that snow removal was impeded by cars parked on the streets. He said that the crews would begin Monday with treating the roads with salt – 400 tons of which was delivered Sunday morning – in order to break down the bonds between the snow and the roadway. The operation would shift to plowing as the snow falls, then will return to road treatment as crews clean up.Anticipating a long few days, Hall said he was heading to bed around 8 p.m. Sunday.Lynn Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy has scheduled a meeting Monday morning to prepare for the storm and, along with other local officials, advised residents to keep an eye out for parking bans.Cresta said he anticipates Swampscott will also have to keep an eye on coastal flooding as whipping winds causes a storm surge around high tide Tuesday morning.”We will have the saw horses out because we’ll also have the tidal surge and will have to monitor that,” Cresta said. He identified areas of Humphrey Street, Puritan Road and Atlantic Avenue by Preston Beach as prone to flooding. He said 16 public works employees (including a mechanic) and about 24 contractors will be working in preparation and throughout the storm.Meanwhile, residents also were reportedly preparing. Reports circulated on Twitter of a five-to-10 minute wait for a shopping carriage and hour-long checkout lines at the Market Basket in Chelsea, for instance.”We’re preparing for a lot of snow,” Hall said simply.