LIPA: Most power restored after windstorm

Electricity was restored to thousands Wednesday after a night of high winds had cut power to nearly 13,000 customers, the Long Island Power Authority said.

LIPA's storm center website said power had been returned to all but 710 customers as of 6:18 a.m. Wednesday. By 6:45 p.m., that number was down to 477 customers.

On Wednesday night, Huntington had the bulk of the outages because a main line was knocked out, probably by winds, said LIPA spokesman Scott Garver. That problem is expected to be resolved by about 8:15 p.m., he said.

"All of last night's outages have been repaired," Garver said Wednesday night. "However, due to the high winds that continued today, we did experience additional outages."

Winds were still gusting at 30 mph in parts of Long Island Wednesday evening, with sustained winds at 20 mph, said the National Weather Service in Upton.

At its peak on Tuesday night, the storm, with wind gusts reaching 59 mph at about 9 p.m., had knocked out power to more than 12,600 customers.

The high winds grounded planes and delayed Long Island Rail Road trains Tuesday night.

But, as predicted by forecasters, the strong winds began to die by early Wednesday, when the weather was fair and dry, with a high of 44 degrees. Temperatures are expected to drop, however, Wednesday night into the 20s and remain cold Thursday.

At Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma Tuesday night, winds created an "air tunnel effect" and peeled back part of the roof of a hangar housing Heritage Flight Academy airplanes, Airport Commissioner Teresa Rizzuto said. Five planes and a boat were stored there, but were not damaged, she said. There were no injuries.

All flights scheduled for Wednesday morning at MacArthur were listed as being on time at the airport's website, flylima.com.

A meteorologist at the National Weather Service, Kyle Struckmann, said wind gusts reached 40 mph at LaGuardia Airport and 37 mph at Kennedy just before 5 p.m. Tuesday.

But winds about 2,000 feet above the airports were hitting 75 mph -- hurricane-force, he said: "It makes a ride pretty bumpy."

Air traffic delays stretched into the night. From about 6 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, planes were not allowed to land at LaGuardia, and as winds peaked a few hours later, incoming flights faced an average delay of 90 minutes, according to the Federal Aviation Administration website. Planes bound to Kennedy Airport reported delays of more than three hours, according to the FAA.

By Wednesday morning, general arrival and departure delays at both airports were 15 minutes or less, and no destination-specific delays were being reported, according to the FAA website.