Lights flickered, then went out altogether across big swaths of the Tri-State area this weekend, as severe storms cut electricity to more than 75,000 residents from northern New Jersey to Long Island and parts of New York City. As heavy rain and gusty winds swept through, utility crews spent the night cutting away downed trees, swapping out damaged gear and slowly bringing neighborhoods back online.
The outages stacked up quickly across multiple utilities. Jersey Central Power & Light logged 32,488 customers without service, according to Jersey Central Power & Light. Overlapping territory in New Jersey, PSEG New Jersey reported about 19,406 affected accounts, while PSEG Long Island showed roughly 8,837 outages.
Closer to New York City, Con Edison listed about 6,056 customers out across the five boroughs and another 5,064 in Westchester County. To the north and west, Orange & Rockland Utilities reported roughly 4,597 outages. Taken together, those tallies add up to more than 75,000 people without power, as compiled by FOX 5 NY.
Warnings and travel advisories
Officials had been sounding the alarm ahead of the storms, telling residents to brace for sudden severe thunderstorms, heavy downpours and damaging wind gusts as a squall line pushed through the region. The New York office of the National Weather Service issued watches and advisories covering much of the Tri-State…