Nor’easter pelts Long Island with rain, wind, snow and sleet

A powerful nor’easter pounded Long Island with wind, rain, snow and sleet on Friday in a weather assault that toppled trees, flooded communities and took out power.

“It was multifaceted, that’s for sure,” said meteorologist Joe Pollina from the National Weather Service in Upton. “We had everything more or less.”

The storm disrupted transportation — canceling thousands of flights in the region, shutting down Amtrak’s Boston-to-Washington, D.C. corridor, and causing service suspensions on the Long Island Rail Road. Slush made roads slippery for the morning commute, and sleet pelted drivers in the evening rush hour.

Many areas experienced wind gusts of more than 65 mph — 78 mph in Bayville and Middle Island were the highest — and the winds were a prime culprit in the power outages that afflicted more than 96,000 PSEG Long Island customers, with Nassau harder hit than Suffolk. More than 49,000 remained without power as of 9:30 p.m., but crews worked overnight, including 323 on-island contractors and 75 line workers from Quebec and Ohio.

Though police said there was no loss of life, the storm was not short on scares.

In Wantagh, Richie Nortwich said he was driving when a large tree collapsed right across Oakwood Avenue in front of him, so he stopped.

Then he heard a “big bang.”

“All of a sudden something hit my car,” said Nortwich, a Levittown resident. “It was a pole. My life flashed in front of my eyes.”

The National Weather Service said as much as 4 inches of rain fell Friday on parts of the Island. The flooding trapped some people in their cars in Miller Place, closed off roads and forced people to save their basements.

“I have four sump pumps going,” said Leo Waight, 61, said from his basement in Freeport, where water was coming up through the concrete floor.

Overnight, officials and their nerves waited for word of erosion and more flood damage on coastal communities and beaches as a full moon supersized the high tide.

The highest winds were expected overnight on the East End, and the National Weather Service said strong winds would remain Saturday but lose strength as the nor’easter moved off. Long Island was under a high wind warning, through 6 a.m. Saturday and a coastal flood warning through 2 a.m. Sunday.

Southampton Supervisor Jay Schneiderman made his usual storm circuit Friday — eight hours around town and the oft-flooded Dune Road, impassable in the morning. He said he had seen more flooding in past storms but this one was no slouch. “I think what helped us was the ground wasn’t frozen,” Schneiderman said. “A lot of the rain is absorbing into the ground.”

High tide came at 8 p.m. but the supervisor said he was waiting to see the damage at dawn’s early light, particularly the ocean beaches and streets near Peconic Bay, swollen with rain.

State officials closed some of their parks due to dangerous conditions and were also waiting for Saturday to gauge the damage of another weather assault on its beachfront.

Specifically, Orient Beach State Park and Napeague State Park, in Montauk, were shut Friday due to flooding, said George Gorman, state parks deputy regional director for Long Island. Wildwood State Park in Riverhead was partially open, he said, both the beach and the bathhouse, whose pilings kept it out of the water pooling underneath, were closed.

Oyster Bay’s Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park was closed because of the risk of falling trees or their limbs, Gorman said: “That made it dangerous for us to keep the park open.”

Forecasters said both counties can expect high winds overnight, with sustained winds of up to 40 mph and gusts of up to 70 mph.

Flood-vulnerable communities along the Great South Bay may see 3- to 3 1⁄2 -foot inundation during high tides on Saturday, and that flooding may linger “well after high tides,” forecasters said.

Suez North America, the operator of the county’s sewage treatment system, closed the tidal gates at the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant in East Rockaway. The plant flooded with 9 1⁄2 feet of water during superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Police in both counties reported storm-related crashes and other problems but said none led to life-threatening injuries.

However, many first responders, including in Garden City, were stretched.

“We have 14 instances of trees or tree limbs down, two additional wires down, and one railroad gate broken off,” a Garden City police officer said.

During the afternoon, for example, one tree toppled onto a house, but it was entangled with electrical wires, bringing power lines down for multiple homes.

“You’re talking about a small crew,” the officer said. “We’re running ragged.”

With Patricia Kitchen, William Murphy, Chau Lam, Carl MacGowan, Craig Schneider, Robert Brodsky, Jean-Paul Salamanca, Mark Harrington and Emily Dooley