Home News Local News Drifting snow and icy roads make travel treacherous this morning

Drifting snow and icy roads make travel treacherous this morning

File photo: Peter Blasl

Travel remains treacherous on local roads this morning after a blizzard that dropped 11 to 16 inches of snow across the North Fork yesterday and knocked out power to thousands of local customers.

PSEG-LI quickly restored power to the vast majority of affected customers. This morning the utility is reporting scattered outages on the North Fork, where 28 customers in Orient remain in the dark. All of the reported remaining 40 outages are in eastern Suffolk, according to the utility’s online outage center. (To report an outage, call PSEG’s 24-hour electric service number at 1-800-490-0075.)

Schools on the North Fork are closed again today. Southold Town offices are opening on a two-hour delay. See updated list of closings, cancellations and delays.

“If you don’t have to go out, don’t go out,” deputy highway superintendent Roger Tabor said this morning. “If you must go out, drive slowly,” he said.

Town highway crews were working till about 3:30 this morning plowing local roads, Tabor said. After a few hours rest, workers were getting ready to head back out, he said in a phone interview at 7 a.m.

“With the high winds last night, there was a lot of drifting,” Tabor said. “We’re getting back on the road now to tackle that,” he said.

Tabor said motorists venturing out into the blizzard yesterday hindered plowing operations.

“Usually people are pretty good about staying off the roads, but yesterday for some reason there were more people out than we would have liked,” Tabor said.

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Denise Civiletti
Denise is a veteran local reporter and editor, an attorney and former Riverhead Town councilwoman. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including a “writer of the year” award from the N.Y. Press Association in 2015. She is a founder, owner and co-publisher of this website.