TRENTON — The cleanup continued on Saturday from the nor'easter that dropped a foot of snow in North Jersey and caused serious beach erosion along the Jersey Shore.

"It certainly looks and sounds a lot calmer outside this morning. Aside from a few stray snowflakes, precipitation from our nor'easter has come to an end. The 60+ mph wind gusts are long gone," Meteorologist Dan Zarrow said.

He said the high tide was lower than expected on Friday night but the next three high tide cycles (Saturday morning, Saturday evening, and Sunday morning) could cause minor to moderate flooding along the shore.

The most serious issues are with power and transportation, with heavy snow, branches and trees taking down power lines that knocked out power to thousands of JCP&L, PSE&G and Atlantic City customers, especially in North Jersey.

As of 9:00 a.m., more than 162,000 remained in the dark on their respective outage maps:

  • JCP&L: 131,297 customers mostly in Hunterdon, Morris, Somerset, Sussex and  Warren counties
  • PSE&G: 19,437 customers mostly in Camden, Essex, Mercer, Somerset and Union counties
  • Atlantic City Electric: 11,102 customers mostly in Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties

JCP&L spokesman Ron Morano said the first step in restoration is making conditions safe for crews by clearing out trees that block their work areas. "You make it safe and then you do repairs," Morano said.

"Crews worked overnight in challenging conditions to restore power, focusing on critical facilities and outages affecting the largest numbers of customers first. We expect many customers in neighborhoods with widespread outages to be restored today," PSE&G spokeswoman Karen Johnson said.

Amtrak suspended service on the Northeast Corridor between New York and Washington on Saturday morning citing power outages between Philadelphia and New York.

"There is a commercial power outage between Philadelphia and Trenton and our trains are unable to operate," Amtrak spokeswoman Karen Toll told New Jersey 101.5. She said crews are working to restore power and they hope to restore service by mid-morning.

Service on SEPTA's West Trenton and Trenton lines was also suspended by the outage.

NJ Transit ran a regular Saturday schedule on most of its lines.  The Atlantic City Line was suspended because of an Amtrak wire issue near Philadelphia and the River Line was suspended as well.

Cross-honoring is in effect on rail, light rail, buses and private carriers on Friday and Saturday due to the storm. PATH is also cross honoring.

Sixty-five flights were cancelled in an out of Newark Liberty Airport on Saturday morning, according to FlightAware.com.

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