A nor’easter brought more than 50 mph gusts and heavy rains that caused flooding, wind damage and power outages to Long Island Monday night into Tuesday.
The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a high wind warning for the East End, a flood watch for the South Shore of Nassau and western Suffolk counties, and a wind advisory for the North Shore. The agency reported 52 mph gusts in Orient and more than three inches of rain in parts of the Island. PSEG Long Island reported nearly 2,000 outages as of Wednesday morning.
“Residents should be ready for any possible power outages,” Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said at a news conference Monday morning, urging residents to secure loose items in yards.
Overnight downpours that drenched the Eastern seaboard from Washington, D.C., to New York City persisted throughout the morning.
Despite Tuesday’s deluge, New York‘s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said commuter rail and subway services were running as usual with only scattered morning rush-hour delays.
Tuesday’s wet, windy weather marked the first wave of a two-phase storm system targeting the Northeast, forecasters said. The first was expected to last through Thursday, dumping up to 3 inches of rain. The second was expected to arrive Friday and remain through Saturday, pouring on 2 more inches of rain, they said.
“If we add up both storms over the next couple of days, we could have totals easily of 3-4 inches,” NWS meteorologist Bob Oravec of the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, told Reuters. “The worst rains will be over by Halloween (Sunday) morning. It might be OK for trick-or-treating.”
Even before the first raindrops hit the ground, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a disaster emergency Monday evening for parts of the state that included the New York City area and Albany region. The declaration empowers the government to implement policies it would not normally be permitted to impose for the safety and protection of citizens.
New York State was stunned early last month when torrential rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ida fell with record intensity, inundating streets and subways. At least 17 people died, mostly in New York City, where victims drowned in flooded basement apartments. In all, the storm killed at last 50 people, including 27 in New Jersey.
-With Reuters
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