(Updated: 11:15 a.m.) Riverhead and the North Fork escaped relatively unscathed from the powerful storm system that wreaked havoc across the eastern seaboard in the past 48 hours, packing strong winds, large hail and spawning more than two dozen tornadoes. The storm destroyed hundreds of homes and left seven dead in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
More than 34,000 PSEG-LI customers were left without power in the wake of the storm, but across the North Fork, the number left without lights was in the hundreds, according to PSEG-LI’s website.
The Village of Greenport power plant shut down at about 2:15 this morning, Mayor George Hubbard said. Something tripped a breaker, he said. An electric department foreman responded and switched the breaker on, restoring power. Service to Greenport Village electric customers was out for about 35 minutes, Hubbard said.
“Something must have hit the line coming in. We don’t know if it was on their side or our side, but something hit it and tripped the breaker,” Hubbard said. Village Clerk Sylvia Pirillo sent an announcement about the outage to local media this morning.
Areas to the west were harder hit than eastern Suffolk, according to the PSEG.
That’s where the winds were stronger, National Weather Service meteorologist Tim Morrin said this morning. Wind gusts in Riverhead and Southold maxed out at 40 to 45 mph, Morrin said.
Areas to the west and along the coast of eastern Suffolk experienced gusts of up to 50 mph, he said.
Rainfall of about an inch to an inch and a quarter fell, causing minor flooding in poor drainage areas, Morrin said.
No fallen trees blocked local roadways as a result of the storm, both Riverhead and Southold highway superintendents said. Tree limbs and branches fell and some took power lines with them, Southold highway chief Vinny Orlando said. “But we didn’t get called out to remove any downed trees from the roads lat night,” he said.
“Nothing major,” was Riverhead highway superintendent Gio Woodson’s assessment this morning.
As of 8 a.m. there were still 22,502 PSEG-LI customers without power, according to the utility’s website. There were 340 customers without power in Southold, 331 of them in the Southold hamlet. Eighty-two customers had no lights in Riverhead, half of them in Wading River.
To report an outage to PSEG-LI call 1-800-490-0075. The utility reminds residents to assume any downed wires are energized. Keep away and call police and PSEG to report all downed wires.
