A slow-moving nor’easter has begun battering the Riverhead area with strong, gusty winds and rain, bringing down limbs and power lines, toppling some trees and flooding roads, yards and parking lots across town.
“This is only the beginning of this storm,” Riverhead Highway Superintendent Mike Zaleski said in a phone interview this morning. “This storm won’t be pulling out until late tomorrow,” he said, citing a recent weather update he’d received.
A coastal flood warning and a wind advisory remain in effect for northeast Suffolk until 6 p.m. Sunday.
The National Weather service predicts major flooding along the Peconic River in Riverhead by noon today, with a total tide of 7 to 7.5 feet above mean low water and about 3.5 to 4 feet above mean high water.
Heidi Behr Way and the parking lots south of East Main Street were already flooded at 10 a.m.
The full moon this weekend is contributing to higher-than-normal astronomical tides.
Total rainfall Friday through Sunday is expected to be 3-4 inches across Long Island and Connecticut, and 2-3 inches in New York City, according to the National Weather Service in New York.
Bands of light to moderate rain should continue Sunday into Sunday night as the weakening storm lingers nearby or to the south, according to the NWS forecast. Rain bands from the low will continue to pivot up into the area
today, National Weather Service forecasters said. “Conditions may even dry out for a time in spots between these bands especially this afternoon. Then as the low pivots toward the New Jersey coast the entire area should see the best push of organized rainfall tonight into Sunday morning.”
Rainfall will taper off and eventually end from southwest to northeast Monday into Monday night, the weather service said. Dry conditions expected by late Monday night.
Photo courtesy of Riverhead Highway Department
The storm left roughly 17,000 PSEG-Long Island customers without power this morning, according to the utility’s online power outage map. About 100 customers in Riverhead Town were without power at 10:30 a.m. Scattered outages were depicted on the map across the island, including the East End.
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