A round of late-summer thunderstorms overnight impacted several upstate New York communities.
Intense thunderstorms at the end of a heatwave triggered power outages throughout the Hudson Valley up through the Capital Region. The Rensselaer County village of Hoosick Falls bore the brunt of the bad weather. A state of emergency was called after the storms toppled power poles and downed trees. Mayor Rob Allen says while houses and vehicles suffered damage, no village residents reported serious injuries, and National Grid crews have been working to restore service.
"There's a lot of lines that will need to be taken care of a lot of poles that will need to be put back or replaced," Allen said. "There was one transformer as well that was down. So there's a lot of work that has to be done. The imminent danger right now is taken care of. EMS, fire, police have been outstanding with the recovery and making sure areas are cordoned off and we've been communicating with the locations that remain a concern at this point. Now it's National Grid and the village’s Department of Public Works doing what they can clean things up."
Village resident and WAMC Vox Pop contributor Gordon Fricke, a local mechanic, says the storm caught him off-guard.
“I was walking our dog a few minutes prior to the storm coming," Fricke said. "And it was a bit windy and unsettled, but it wasn't severe. And within minutes, we have some hills west of our house, that kind of the weather has to come over them. And it hit so fast and so hard that we had to run back to the house and the rain and the wind was just like a wall. And there was already limbs and trees and debris. You know, I could hear stuff snapping.”
Fricke says it appeared areas just a few miles away were largely unscathed.
Widespread damage was reported in Ulster, Dutchess and Orange counties, where approximately 24,000 customers are without power. Joe Jenkins is with utility Central Hudson.
"We had more than 45,000 customers who are impacted by this, but we do have crews that are out in the field making repairs, they made significant progress overnight, they continue to do so on Friday," said Jenkins. "We have also secured 150 additional line workers by way of mutual aid who we expect to arrive later in the day on Friday. They will help us expedite repairs. However, due to the widespread nature of these outages and just the sheer amount of damage that we've seen across the service area, we do expect some of the customers in the most heavily impacted areas to remain out overnight and into the weekend."
Jenkins says more than 22,000 customers were restored as of 11 a.m., and that number grows every hour. Jenkins warns forecasters are calling for more potential storms Friday afternoon and evening that could cause additional outages.
According to National Grid's upstate power outage map, customers still without lights in Rensselaer and Albany Counties should expect full restoration by 11:30 p.m.
Jenkins notes utility companies are also keeping an eye on Atlantic hurricanes.
"And if we do see potential risk, we will make preparations and that includes you know, potentially bringing in additional crews from outside and staging them here prior to a storm hitting to make sure that we can start making repairs just as soon as possible," Jenkins said.
Hurricane Lee has been intensifying although most models indicate the storm will continue traveling over the ocean, for now. One model shows a possible landing late next week along the mid-Atlantic or New England coast.
The National Hurricane Center says it's "way too soon" to know what impact Lee might have.
