Strong winds gusting as high as 59 mph early Friday morning brought down tree limbs and power lines overnight from Thursday into Friday, cutting power to thousands of people.
Officials say that as of late Saturday afternoon, around 546 customers in Monroe County were without power. That was down from more than 9,000 customers affected at the peak of the outages on Friday. The company announced that it expects to restore 95% of customers impacted by 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 2nd.
Power&Construction Group restores power to an Irondequiot home on Densmore Rd. The crew reported the heaviest calls to restore service coming from Greece and Webster. pic.twitter.com/S5t6zRX7SH
— WXXI News (@WXXINews) November 1, 2019
Some roads were closed temporarily in various parts of the region Friday morning due to downed trees and power lines.
The High Wind Warning for the Rochester area was canceled mid-morning on Friday.
News 8 meteorologist Josh Nichols says that you can also expect Saturday will see partly sunny skies with a high of 48, and Sunday's forecast calls for partly cloudy weather with a high of 42.
RG&E spokesman Michael Jamison says the utility pre-staged "dozens of line crews and tree crews across the service area" to get ready for the storm. He says RG&E and NYSEG (both subsidiaries of AVANGRID), had crews working throughout the night and have additional resources in place to assess damage and make repairs.
The combination of a soaking rain softening the ground and high winds helped to downed trees and power lines.
Jamison says people should stay at least 30 feet away from a downed power line, and if the power line contacts your vehicle, stay inside and wait for help.
He says call RG&E to report downed any power lines or outages. You can do that at 1-800-743-1701.
NYSEG customers should call 1-800-572-1131.
National Grid customers should call 1-800-867-5222.
Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter says his deputies and other first responders were busy dealing with road closures and other issues. He cautioned drivers to watch out for malfunctioning traffic lights related to power outages. Baxter says treat those intersections as a four-way stop.
“When you come upon an intersection with no traffic lights, make sure you stop and yield, and yield to the car to the right and just follow the basic traffic patterns that we’ve all been trained since we took our driver’s license test years ago." Baxter said.
