High winds spawn power outages, ferry troubles

TRENTON, N.J. --High winds and driving rain Wednesday left thousands of Garden State residents without power and caused a troubled commute for some ferry riders and drivers heading to New York.

Gusts of up to 53 mph were reported in parts of Bergen and Hudson counties, said National Weather Service meteorologist John Cristantello. Winds were expected to drop slightly, to about 45 mph, during the evening commute while rain was expected to stop by nighttime, he said.

"It won't be quite as bad as this morning, but wind gusts of 45 miles per hour can be felt on your car," Cristantello said.

The storm knocked out power to more than 50,000 Garden State homes and businesses after high winds knocked down power lines.

Some 25,500 customers of Public Service Electric & Gas had no power, despite early morning efforts by company's work crews that already had restored power to 22,500 customers, the company said.

The worst of the storm hit at about 5 a.m. and the majority of the PSE&G outages were in the southern portion of the state, said PSE&G spokeswoman Judy Ohl.

Jersey Central Power & Light said 25,000 of its customers were without power. Of those, 13,000 homes and businesses were in the northern part of the state, and 12,000 were in the central portion, said Mark Durbin, spokesman for First Energy, which is the parent company of JCP&L.

Also Wednesday, a New York Waterway ferry running from Monmouth County to the southern tip of Manhattan reported some trouble after being hit by waves, said spokesman Pat Smith.

The ferry "just took a bounce between waves and so the second wave washed over the bow," Smith said. He said the ferry continued its trip to Pier 11, near Wall Street, and there were no immediate reports of injuries, damages or that the ferry was taking on water.

On the George Washington Bridge, two out of four eastbound upper lanes were closed after a tractor-trailer flipped over at 7:30 a.m., said Port Authority spokeswoman Tiffany Townsend. The lower level of the bridge remained open.

The Port Authority lowered the speed limit from 45 mph to 35 mph, and banned tractor trailers, recreational vehicles and motorcycles from the George Washington, Goethals, and Bayonne bridges and the Outer Bridge Crossing

At the airports, departures delays averaged one hour and 39 minutes at Newark International and 56 minutes at La Guardia, where winds were gusting at 59 mph, the Port Authority said.