More Than 20K Without Power After Thunderstorms Lash Long Island

A line of severe thunderstorms careened across Long Island overnight, knocking out power to tens of thousands of residents as trees and power lines came toppling down.

More than 40,000 PSEG Long island customers were without power at one point Tuesday morning. As of 4:13 p.m., PSEG is reporting 20,219 outages across the island, with nearly all of them in Suffolk County. The towns of Brookhaven and Smithtown were by far the hardest hit by the storm, with 11,831 and 2,808 power outages being reported, respectively. Find the full map of power outages here.

Service on the LIRR’s Port Jefferson branch is temporarily suspended in both directions between Port Jefferson and Stony Brook as a result of multiple downed trees and power lines west of Stony Brook.

There is hourly service between Smithtown and Huntington as LIRR crews work to clear the tracks, the railroad says.

All classes before 11 a.m. at Stony Brook University were canceled Tuesday. The university is dealing with several downed trees and wires that have made navigating campus hazardous, according to the Stony Brook University Emergency Operations Center. Photos from the school appear to show the storm also blew out multiple windows on campus. Top of the Brook, a weather station atop the Stony Brook Health Science Center, recorded a wind gust of 95 mph at 4:58 a.m.–just shy of Category 2 hurricane strength.

A state of emergency was declared in Port Jefferson Village Tuesday morning.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Have photos of storm damage? Email them to ryan@patch.com

Photo: JoAnne Young Doesschate/Stony Brook