Storm leaves mark on North Hempstead - but not like last time

Great Neck peninsula residents were grateful Thursday's storm didn't cause the same upheaval as a freak June thunderstorm that uprooted trees and left homes without power for days.

Instead, the brunt of the storm that hit New York City particularly hard mostly just left branches and leaves on roads, said Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman, as he assessed the damage Friday morning.

Great Neck saw most of the debris damage, as well as other northern communities, Manhasset and Port Washington, Kaiman said.

"If we didn't have the June storm, this would have appeared to be a bad storm," said Ralph Krietzman, mayor of the Village of Great Neck. His village was hit hard by the June 24 storm, which uprooted more than a thousand trees and left residents without power for as long as five days.

"This time it was nothing like that," he said Friday, of some downed trees and outages that were mostly restored by morning.

"This summer we seem to have had two 100-year storms," he said. "Maybe someone can be nice to us for the next hundred years. We've had our share."

The town worked with villages to clear roads of debris, Kaiman said.

"It's a beautiful day out there," he said, "which will help us with the clean up."

Great Neck High School North was closed Friday because there was no electricity.

Some tree branches were piled on the side of Plandome Road Friday. Some parts of the neighborhood lost power Thursday evening, said Sylvia Jacobs, executive director of the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore.

"We had 150 kids here" attending religious school when the storm passed through, she said. "I considered taking them to the basement." Ultimately, the synagogue sustained no damage.

With Sophia Chang