Travel Conditions Treacherous Across Region

A major winter storm Friday left about a foot of snow across much of Long Island, caused a rush-hour nightmare and left roadways treacherous.

At midnight, the North Shore of Long Island, including Plainview, was still seeing significant snowfall. Weather experts said the snow would be tapering off into the morning hours. The sun should appear on Saturday.

Roads were snow covered and traffic was crawling on major roadways through the evening, with two and three-hour commutes from Manhattan reported.

As the evening went on, major thoroughfares, including the entire Long Island Expressway through Suffolk County, were closed. Part of the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway was also closed to all but emergency vehicles. Abandoned cars littered roadways everywhere, authorities said.

Both the Northern State Parkway and major-east-west routes like Old Country Road and Jericho Turnpike were snow covered and icy.

Several hundred LIPA customers lost power in Plainview in the early evening, but power was restored to all but a handful of those customers by midnight. LIPA reported more than 350 outages system wide at midnight, affecting nearly 13,000 customers across the area.

The Long Island Rail Road ran smoothly through most of the storm, including service through Hicksville to Bethpage and Farmingdale on the Ronkonkoma branch and to Syosset and Huntington on the Port Jefferson branch. Service east of Huntington was suspended over night due to switching and weather-related problems, the LIRR reported.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency in response to the storm, which could leave more than a foot of snow across Long Island by Saturday morning.

No injuries were reported through the evening hours, authorities said.

Most local events scheduled for Friday night were cancelled.

This is a breaking story; check back with Patch for updates.

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