Long Islanders Face Rising Tides, Flash Flooding As Hurricane Crosses Caribbean

LONG BEACH, NY. — Hurricane Melissa made landfall in the Bahamas Thursday, and Long Islanders more than 1,000 miles away were facing heavy rain of their own.

Forecasters had warned that Long Island would see some rain late in this week, but said major storm-related impacts were unlikely. Melissa made landfall in Jamaica Tuesday as a category 5 storm, USA Today reported, and The Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica were battered with multiple days of rain.

In New York, single-day rainfall records were broken at multiple locations, including MacArthur airport. While the rain was confined to a single day, multiple Nassau County locales, specifically along the South Shore, had to respond.

The City of Long Beach faced flash flooding just before 5 p.m., asking residents to stay off roads until 5:30 p.m., when officials expected the tide to have cleared to a safe degree. That flash flooding came after the intersection of Pine Street and Riverside Boulevard had closed for over an hour due to some flooding of its own.

“The situation on the ground here changed a little bit, definitely experiencing some flash flooding, intermittently throughout the city,” Long Beach Public Relations Director John McNally said. “We did just close West Park Avenue through the west end, which is along the bay side [of the city], not necessarily due to life-threatening anything, but when people drive through waves and running water it damages homes and property. We’re asking people to stay off the roads unless necessary, but we anticipate the tide to have gone down sufficiently enough around 5:30 p.m.”

Meanwhile, in Hempstead, multiple reports surfaced of downed trees both on power lines and in roadways.

"The Hempstead town storm response team is out in full force,” Town Supervisor John Feretti said. “We've had numerous reports of downed trees throughout our township and have cleared them out of roadways. We're also working with PSEG to respond to downed trees on power lines."

As of 5:18 p.m., representatives from PSEG Long Island reported just over 1,700 customers experiencing outages in a network of 1.2 million. PSEG officials said they couldn’t specifically tie those outages to the storm, and the number of affected customers was down to 214 Friday morning.

PSEG officials also confirmed reports of a downed utility pole on Massapequa's Sunset Boulevard, saying a crew was on the scene working to make repairs.

In a conversation Thursday evening, McNally added that the City of Long Beach hopes to address flood mitigation in some of the affected areas of the city in upcoming rounds of capital improvements.

Meanwhile, in Suffolk County, officials from the Town of Brookhaven said they had received no reports of flooding damage. The town did see two trees fall down, one on top of George Link Jr. Senior Apartments in Coram, officials said. A second tree fell in Ronkonkoma, on the Brookhaven side. While the falling tree at the senior apartments put a hole in the complex’s roof, officials said no injuries were reported in either incident.

In East Hampton, officials said some low-lying roadways experienced flooding overnight, but said Friday morning that, "all roadways remain passable with caution."

As rain subsided Friday morning, Long Islanders were greeted with a pair of weather updates from the National Weather Service. The first came as a wind advisory at 2:40 a.m. Friday morning, which would take effect at noon Friday and remain in effect until midnight Saturday morning.

The advisory applies to southern Connecticut, northeast New Jersey and southeast New York, including the entirety of both Nassau and Suffolk. Winds of 20-to-30 miles-per-hour are expected, the advisory reads, adding that isolated gusts could reach up to 50 miles per hour.

One impact the high wind could have, according to the NWS, is the redistribution of unsecured Halloween decorations or other outdoor objects. Additionally, the NWS said tree limbs could fall down and power outages may result from the wind. Drivers are urged to use extra caution, as winds this high can make driving difficult, and homeowners are urged to secure

The second update was a hazardous weather outlook for southern Connecticut and southeast New York, issued at 2:59 a.m. Friday. In that outlook, the National Weather Service said affected residents could check weather.gov or the NOAA’s weather radio station for updates, adding that hazardous weather conditions Friday were not expected to meet NWS criteria for a “weather warning.” A full list of NWS warning criteria is available here.