A severe thunderstorm warning has been issued for eastern Suffolk County until 2:45 p.m., according to the National Weather Service in Upton.
The storm is expected to bring heavy rain and damaging winds with gusts up to 60 mph that could bring down trees and power lines. An earlier thunderstorm warning for southern Nassau, Queens and Brooklyn has since expired.
And that’s not all. Temperatures are expected to drop 30 degrees Friday night into Saturday morning, bringing a blast of arctic air that could leave much of the region covered with black ice, officials said.
This follows some of the worst flooding in a decade on Long Island Friday, from out East in Southampton to Island Park on Nassau’s South Shore, causing havoc on the roads and inundating neighborhoods and state parks.
Waterlogged areas on Nassau’s South Shore included Oceanside near the middle school and East Rockaway where police evacuated one individual from a home, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said at a news conference Friday in Bethpage.
“It was very dangerous this morning,” Blakeman said. ” … We had extreme flooding. If you stay inside in your home, the likelihood is that it will be safe but some people had significant water in their basements. Some streets were flooded. We’re probably going to lose a couple of cars. We had to extract some people from vehicles.”
Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said there were about 32 vehicle accidents Thursday night into Friday morning although only five were storm-related.
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“We also had 104 calls for people trapped in their cars and so forth,” Ryder said. “All of them have been taken care of nobody’s been injured.”
Suffolk police did not see a rise in 911 calls during the storm.
In Island Park, the blaring sound of car alarms awoke Isabella Franzese, 53, at the Radcliffe Road home she and her husband only moved into Sunday. Moments later, a man on a kayak floated by, checking on neighbors.
“I’m ready to move to Arizona right now,” she said, eying what she described as “a lot of property damage” in her area.
Elsewhere, “very high” levels of flooding were reported in Southampton, especially on Dune Road. The entryway to the Ponquogue Bridge in Hampton Bays had been closed, but reopened to traffic around 10 a.m. Friday.
“I would certainly say that one of the important things to note is that this is probably the most amount of flooding that we’ve seen since Sandy,” said Southampton public safety and emergency management administrator Ryan Murphy.
Surging waters from the “immense winter storm” sprawling across most of the nation were boosted by the new moon — similar to Superstorm Sandy — but by midmorning tidal gauges were already falling, though the Peconic Bay area wasn’t expected to peak until around 11 a.m., Murphy said.
PSEG Long Island outages peaked at nearly 28,000 customers without power, the utility said. About 2,900 customers still did not have power as of 1:20 p.m., largely in the towns of Southold, Brookhaven, Huntiongton, and Oyster Bay, according to the utility’s outage map.
“I’m personally sucking down Dunkin’ coffee as if my life depended on it right now,” said Nicole Alloway, 50, of Southold, who was waiting for the electricity to go back on in her Bayview Peninsula neighborhood. “The lot next to our house is completely covered with water and the waves on the Peconic Bay are reaching to the top of my mom’s flagpole. It was a hell of a storm overnight.”
In Cutchogue, just five or to the west, Debra Scurracchio, 65, was unscathed.
“We are doing well,” she said. “Right now the winds have stopped and the rain but we did lose power this morning around 6am-ish but it came back right away.”
‘It is a mess’
Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell said the storm left a “mess” and a shelter was being set up on Pacific Street at the Human Resources building for anyone displaced.
Among those effected by the storm was a quadriplegic resident in Orient who declined to leave but was moved upstairs to the second floor of their home.
“We have some wires across the road,” Russell said. “We have a couple of poles across the road. Also a lot of floods, a lot of puddling. It’s a mess out there. Things are starting to clear up but it is a mess.”
Route 48 between Boisseau Avenue and Albertson Lane was shut down due to three downed poles and will likely be stay closed for the entire day until repairs are made, said Southold Police Chief Martin Flatley.
“I’m anticipating we are going to get some more damage when the cold front comes through and the winds pick up again and the temperatures drop,” he said.
The chief said the causeway between East Marion and Orient is in danger of flooding onto Route 25.
“Just about anywhere along the Peconic Bay side, it’s pretty flooded in all the usually low lying spots,” Flatley said. “Greenport Village — the water is right up to the top of the dock down by Claudio’s … The biggest problem right now is our telephone poles down right now.”
The Meadowbrook State Parkway south of Sunrise Highway in Hempstead was closed due to flooding, state police said. The Wantagh State Parkway — which had also been partially closed — has since reopened.
In New York City, flooding had abated, the NYPD said, with just two sections of major roads at least partly flooded: northbound Henry Hudson Parkway at 232 Street in Manhattan was still blocked — and in the Bronx, one lane of the southbound Major Deegan Expressway at Depot Place was inundated.
The Long Island Rail Road was forced to suspend service on its low-lying Long Beach branch. The Nassau Inter-County Express, or NICE Bus, was cross honoring LIRR fares on its N15 line between Rockville Centre and Long Beach.
The railroad also reported delays on its Hempstead, Port Jefferson, West Hempstead, Montauk and Babylon lines. Some problems were due to a broken rail at Jamaica, according to the LIRR, which outlined its prestorm preparations on Thursday.
“Railroad crews have equipment on hand to be able to respond quickly as conditions warrant — chain saws for clearing downed trees, pumps in the event of flooded areas, identifying locations and availability of supplies for replacing damaged utility poles and crossing gates,” the railroad said.
NICE Bus also advised customers to expect delays and detours caused by the rough weather, which “could create icy, dangerous road conditions.”
At Wantagh’s Jones Beach State Park, “there is significant flooding,” George Gorman, regional director of the New York Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, said, with all the sand underwater from Fields 2 to 6. The boardwalk also flooded.
“And then out at Gilgo State Park, the water is up to the dunes,” Gorman said. “At Robert Moses State Park, the entire beachfront is covered with water except for the far end of Field 2.”
Orient State Park was shut because the entryway flooded, he said.
Determining how much erosion has occurred will have to wait until the water recedes, Gorman said.
Flights, ferries canceled
“An immense winter storm that has brought a frigid blast to much of the continental United States along with impactful winter precipitation will persist in tracking across the eastern U.S. today,” the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center said.
“As of early Friday morning, over 240 million people within the United States are under some form of winter weather warning or advisory,” it said, adding this was one of the “greatest extents” of these alerts ever issued.
Airlines had canceled 2,916 flights around the nation shortly after noon, and 2,916 were delayed — double the early morning total, according to the FlightAware website.
At LaGuardia Airport, 32% of its flights were canceled and 8% delayed. Cancellations hit 8% and delays crept up to 12% at Kennedy Airport.
Fire Island ferry canceled all evening service on Friday, “due to forecasted severe flooding and storm conditions.”
Cliff Clark, CEO of the South Ferry that runs between Shelter Island and North Haven, said the water was the highest he’s seen since possibly Superstorm Sandy. “It’s right close to the highest we’ve had since Sandy,” he said.
The first boat of the day left on schedule at 5:40 a.m. from Shelter Island and had “some pretty heavy seas to deal with,” Clark said.
There was no service disruption, although the North Ferry between Shelter Island and Greenport briefly paused service Friday morning during the high tide.
The rain should start tapering off by the afternoon, but a wind advisory will be in effect until 10 p.m. Friday. Wind speeds of 20 to 30 mph, with gusts up to 60 mph, are expected.
And then bitter cold, coupled with winds gusting to 60 mph, will create wind chills of -10 to zero beginning Friday night and lasting through Saturday’s Christmas Eve Day.
Because temperatures will plummet so dramatically, sliding below freezing by the early evening, any puddles could ice over.
“Scattered” patches of black ice could send cars skidding, especially on high ground including bridges, from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning.
Fortunately, the weather service said, factors limiting that risk “are warmer ground temperatures initially, strong winds, and the air drying out rapidly as the cold air rushes in.”
Snow showers could develop on the East End from Friday evening through Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, both Saturday’s Christmas Eve Day, with an official daytime high of 21 degrees, and Sunday’s Christmas, with a daytime high of 27, will be sunny.
Thankfully for cold-haters, after another frigid night Sunday — with a nighttime low of 17 degrees forecast — thermometers will creep higher during the workweek, rising from 31 on Monday to 45 by Thursday morning.