New City has been hard hit by today's series of thunderstorms. About 1,700 Orange & Rockland customers were without power as of 6 p.m., many of them having lost service around 1 p.m. O&R spokesman Mike Donovan said most outages were concentrated in the area of South Mountain Road and Old Route 304.



Across Rockland County about 2,500 customers were without power.



A total of close to 5,000 customers were affected throughout Clarkstown during the course of the day. The New City Library closed at 2 p.m. because there was no service.



Donovan said initially crews hoped to restore service to the customers who lost power in the early afternoon but lightning forced them to stop working. The estimated time for restoration of service has been pushed to 3 a.m.



O&R released the following update at 6:30 p.m.



A destructive late summer thunderstorm featuring significant lightning, high winds and heavy downpours ripped through the area early this afternoon, knocking out power to about 14,000 O&R electric customers.

About 10,300 customers have been restored to service so far. Of the approximately 3,670 customers currently out of service, the hardest hit area is Rockland with 2,000 customers, followed by Sullivan with 1,097 customers. Customers are also out in Bergen with 454 and Orange 44. O&R is holding its daytime crews through the evening to make repairs and restore service. Those crews will be supplemented by 10 company contractor crews and 15 Con Edison crews. A total of 60 crews will be working tonight at approximately 100 outage locations. O&R also has mobilized a number of administrative storm response functions, including Customer Service.

Customers can report an outage and check service restoration status at www.oru.com or by calling 1-877-434-4100. When reporting an outage, customers should have their 10-digit O&R account number or the phone number associated with their account available, and report whether their neighbors have lost power as well. O&R also invites customers to download O&R's mobile app for iPhone and Android phones, or use the O&R mobile Website to report an outage, check the status of a power problem, and view our outage map.





