Scattered East End outages after storm

About 250 LIPA customers remained without power Tuesday morning, more than 12 hours after storms ripped across Long Island, battering some places with hail.

As of 11:15 a.m., there were 144 outages in Nassau and 120 in Suffolk. Most of those outages -- 140 of them -- were in North Hempstead. In Suffolk, there were 63 in the Town of Riverhead, 28 in Southampton and 20 in Southold.

That was down from close to 6,000 customers left without power after storms brought hail, damaging winds and strong thunderstorms to portions of Nassau and Suffolk Monday afternoon and evening. Some neighborhoods saw golf ball-sized hail.

Crews worked through the night to restore power. The LIPA power outage map estimated outages in North Hempstead would be restored by 3:30 p.m., while those in Southold were likely to be restored by 2:30 p.m. and by 3 p.m. in Riverhead.

The outages in Southampton are to be restored by about 12:30 p.m. in most cases.

Lightning from the storm also knocked out sections of the Long Island Rail Road signal system, causing cancellations and delays on the Babylon, Hempstead, Huntington, Montauk, Port Jefferson and Ronkonkoma lines.

Some of those delays continued Tuesday.

The storms ripped through the East End after 8 p.m. before moving south and offshore.

LIPA reported shortly after 9 p.m. that it had outages affecting 5,896 customers -- many of them in Riverhead, Southold and Southampton.

Meanwhile, skies Tuesday looked to be clear, with a high near 89. There was a chance of showers and thunderstorms Wednesday, with increasing clouds and a high near 79.

Lightning struck a house in Oceanside Monday, causing slight damage, the Oceanside Fire Department said. The owner of the house on West Henrietta Avenue, Richard Aiello, 49, said he was in the back yard reading a newspaper when lightning hit his roof.

"It nearly knocked me off of my chair," Aiello said Monday. "It was the biggest bang that I ever heard in my life."

Neither Aiello nor his wife, Robbin, 48, who was inside, were hurt. He said neighbors reported seeing a huge flash over his house during the impact. The lightning struck the chimney and the back of the house, blowing out the vinyl siding of the split-level stucco home.

With Zachary R. Dowdy, Gary Dymski, Alfonso A. Castillo, Bill Mason and Ann Givens