High winds on LI make for gusty trick-or-treating on Halloween, as 50 mph gusts disrupt region's air travel

Strong, gusting winds posed some of the scariest threats this Halloween on Long Island, even as major wind delays were playing havoc with flights to and from area airports.

Inbound flights to Kennedy Airport were delayed an average of 38 minutes "and decreasing," while flights out of the airport were delayed 46 minutes "and increasing" due to the winds around 9:45 p.m. Friday, according to the FlightAware website.

Airborne planes destined for LaGuardia were delayed more than 90 minutes on average around the same time, while inbound flights still waiting on faraway runways were being delayed on average of two hours and 20 minutes, FlightAware said. Planes leaving LaGuardia were facing delays of up to 89 minutes and decreasing, FlightAware said. 

Winds at those airports were more than 50 mph, according to the National Weather Service, and on Long Island, winds were gusting between 40 mph and 50 mph and sustained winds of between 21 mph and 26 mph.

Power outages affected more than 1,100 PSEG Long Island customers as of 9:45 p.m., according to the utility company's outage map.

John Murray, a meteorologist at the weather service in Upton, said Friday morning that the timing of the high winds was unfortunate. "It will be peak winds ... this afternoon, just when everyone will be out."

"Even overnight tonight, after the wind advisory comes down, it's not like the winds are going to shut off," weather service meteorologist Dominic Ramunni said Friday. "Winds are going to continue gusting overnight tonight, just not necessarily above 45 mph, likely towards 30 mph or 35 mph."

Though torrential rains that deluged the metropolitan area on Thursday were the result of a storm system unrelated to Hurricane Melissa, Murray said the post-hurricane system moving well east of Long Island helped saturate the atmosphere, creating abundant moisture in the air that the low pressure moving across our area used as a feeder, leading to violent and hazardous downpours.

All four weather service official measuring centers in the area — Central Park, LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy and Long Island-MacArthur airports — set rainfall records for the date. MacArthur saw 2.6 inches of rain to smash the daily record of 0.94 inches for Oct. 30. The record one-day rainfall total for Long Island is 13.51 inches, set Aug. 13, 2014.

Still, many locales across Long Island saw 2 or more inches of rain on Thursday, led by Southold, with 2.89. Other hardest-hit locations in Suffolk included Central Islip (2.86), Smithtown (2.80), North Patchogue (2.79) and Central Islip (2.20).

In Nassau, Manhasset Hills saw 2.16 inches of rain, while Levittown had 2.15 and Muttontown 2.06.

Newsday's Nicholas Grass contributed to this article.