A hot, humid, sunny fall day suddenly turned violent as residents of northern Warren County headed home from work Thursday afternoon.
About 5:30 p.m., a storm from the south brought sudden gusts of wind estimated at 50 to 60 mph, whipping trees, raining pine needles and leaves in Chestertown, snapping off trees, felling some onto power lines and uprooting others. Spurts of heavy rain fell but as suddenly as it came, the storm was over, leaving over 4,000 National Grid customers without power in the county.
A thunderstorm rolled back into the area about 9:30 p.m. bringing moderate to heavy rain which was expected to last throughout the night.
Fires were reported in various locations throughout the county. A direct lightning hit was reported to the control board of radio station WCKM in Glens Falls as well as at The Post Star.
The Horicon/Brant Lake area was the heaviest hit, especially the Palisades Road area on the "back side" of Brant Lake with trees and wires down with damage reported to houses. Quarter size hail was reported. Firemen and rescue workers were going door to door to check on the wellbeing of residents.
There were reports of a funnel cloud reported over Chestertown about 6 p.m. All available manpower was called to standby at the Chestertown fire station and a command center was established at the Horicon fire station.
As of 9 p.m., 2,900 of the 4,200 National Grid customers in Warren County without power were in the northern part of the county in the Towns of Chester and Horicon. About 4,000 customers in Saratoga County were without power at 9 p.m.
By midnight, only 40 customers in Washington County were still in the dark and there were no outages reported for Saratoga County. The estimated restoration time for Warren County was noon on Friday.
Power was restored to sections of Chestertown about 11:15 p.m. At 11:30 p.m., there were still 2,235 customers without power in Warren County according to the National Grid website. The southern part of the Chestertown hamlet was without power for about six hours but the northern part never lost power. One part of Route 9 through the hamlet had power, the lower half did not.
It was reported that trees had fallen on several cars but no injuries were reported. June Maxam, publisher of The North Country Gazette, narrowly escaped injury when a tree fell, striking her car as she was trying to exit her property during the storm, taking down power lines to the property.
The National Weather Service in Albany has issued an urban and small stream flood advisory for minor flooding of poor drainage areas in northern Saratoga County in east central New York which includes the city of Saratoga Springs, south central Warren County which includes Lake George Village and Glens Falls, eastern Fulton County in eastern New York, eastern Montgomery County in eastern New York including Fonda and Amsterdam under 6:45 a.m. Friday.
At 10:40 p.m. , the National Weather Service Doppler radar continued to indicate clusters of thunderstorms continuing to move across parts of Montgomery, Fulton, Saratoga and Warren counties. The thunderstorms were moving northeast at 25 mph and were expected to track across parts of these counties for much of the remainder of Friday morning. Radar estimated precipitation of 1 to 4 inches had already fallen across this area since the middle of Thursday afternoon.Some local street flooding was reported earlier in Amsterdam, most of which has run off but the additional rainfall could produce more standing water on roadways especially in Montgomery, Fulton, Saratoga and Warren counties. Additional rainfall amounts of 1 to 3 inches are possible in the advisory area overnight, according to the National Weather Service.
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