Long Island weather: Storm spares LI, but more rain expected

A fast-moving line of storms hit and departed during the evening commute, sparing Long Island the mayhem expected from wind gusts of up to 65 mph, authorities said.

A severe thunderstorm warning that had been issued for Long Island expired at 6:15 p.m., as the storms “weakened below severe limits, and no longer pose an immediate threat to life or property,” the National Weather Service said. Areas north and west of New York City felt the brunt of the storm and widespread gusts of up to 80 mph, meteorologists said.

“It moved through very quickly, basically between 5 o’clock and 6 o’clock,” Nelson Vaz, a meteorologist at the service’s Upton office, said. “For May . . . it’s a pretty healthy line of storms coming through. Typically, it gets more active in the summertime.”

Because it moved so fast, the storm dumped only about a quarter inch of rain, not enough to cause a lot of flooding in low-lying and poor drainage areas, Vaz said.

The winds were expected to be the most dangerous part of the storm, forecasters had said. Gusts of 63 mph were reported at Kings Point, with 68 mph in Bayville between 5:20 and 5:30 p.m., the weather service said.

Suffolk police said a tree fell on an unoccupied vehicle in Deer Park. No one was injured.

Other than that, Suffolk and Nassau police in the early evening reported few storm-related problems.

About 7,700 customers were without power at 7:30 p.m., with the majority in Nassau County. That figure had dropped to about 2,000 just before 9:30 p.m., according to PSEG Long Island.

Full restoration was slated to be done by about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, the company’s website said.

The utility has extra crews available to handle pop-up storms that are expected throughout the night, spokeswoman Elizabeth Flagler said.

“They will be ready to respond to any outages that may occur from wind and lightning,” she said.

Temperatures Wednesday will hit daily highs in the low 60s, and will be cooler on the East End, the weather service said.

While the storm system moved through quickly, it will stall south of the Island, bringing the chance of light rain Wednesday and showers into the weekend, Vaz said.

“We’re not really seeing any signs of some real sunny weather for a while here,” he said. “We could be looking at periods of rain right into the weekend.”