Most of the kids were back in school Tuesday, the sun emerged and utility crews slowly returned electricity customers to the grid after a soaking weekend windstorm.
By late morning, the number of customers without power was below 90,000 in New York City, Long Island and the northern suburbs. "The weather is cooperating," said Consolidated Edison spokesman Chris Olert after the storm's rainfall finally gave ways to blue skies. "We're making good headway."
Tuesday's sunny weather was expected to last through the work week.
Olert said Georgia Power Co. had sent 207 workers and 150 vehicles that would be put to work starting Tuesday night in Westchester County, which had nearly 45,000 of the outages.
The Town of Hempstead had more than half of the 38,000 customers without power on Long Island, the Long Island Power Authority said. Supervisor Kate Murray opened the town's 16 senior centers to all residents — regardless of age — who need a warm place to stay.
Staten Island had the bulk of New York City's 6,600 outages.
The number of individuals affected by the storm was likely much greater than the 90,000 customers without power.
A customer can represent anything from a business or single-family home to an entire apartment building, roughly translated to four individuals per customer — meaning about 360,000 people were without light and heat since Saturday.
Olert said that except for Staten Island, Con Ed expected to have the city back on the grid by Wednesday, Staten Island by Thursday and Westchester by Friday.
LIPA said Long Island should be back by Thursday.
Most of the school districts that had been forced to close Monday were back in session Tuesday, except for Scarsdale, which said closed roads and downed trees and power lines made things too dangerous.
Paul Feiner, supervisor of the Town of Greenburgh, one of the hardest-hit areas in Westchester, said Tuesday he wrote to Gov. David Paterson to suggest that the state National Guard be used to help treecutters and utility crews in future storms.
"It should be incorporated into their training," he said. "They could help cut trees, direct traffic."
At Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, president Richard Moylan said more than 100 trees were destroyed, and many more damaged.
"The storm did a number on us," he said. "We had trees uprooted, trees sheared off at the base, trees split in half."
Some monuments were damaged when the trees fell, including a 12-foot-high pink column that lay broken on the grass Tuesday.
Moylan said cleanup and repairs would take two months.
