Name: Strong winds knock out power across the Northeast
Uploaded: 2025-12-20T04:15:03.409Z
Duration: 3 min 4 s
Description: Intense wind gusts knocked down trees and power lines throughout the Northeast on December 19, before leading to dangerous snow squalls in the evening.

Intense wind gusts knocked down trees and power lines throughout the Northeast on December 19, before leading to dangerous snow squalls in the evening.

Rochester

Strong winds swept through the Northeast, causing significant disruptions including power outages affecting over 100,000 customers and travel delays at major airports such as LaGuardia. The hazardous weather also led to downed trees, road closures, and snow squalls, particularly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

While wind gusts reached up to 60 miles per hour at their peak, conditions have started to improve, allowing power crews to begin restoration efforts. Snow showers and fluctuating temperatures are expected to continue through the weekend, with another weather system forecast to move through the region.

Strong winds knock out power across the Northeast

But let's go to the Northeast now. It's also been very windy with planes struggling to land at the airport there in Rochester, New York. Anna? Now, this is the second time I'm seeing this video now. I can assure you the plane landed, though this is the last type of flight I personally want to be on. Jeff, how do you feel about the shaky landings? I don't know. You know, statistically, I know we've had plane crashes we've reported on even this week, which is always very sad, but statistically it's a safe way to go. I've got a lot of faith in the pilots, I really do. All right. I should have known you would jump to the statistics. Yeah, it's a numbers thing. You're a numbers guy. I'm a numbers guy. I have a friend who's a pilot, flies out of Fresno all the time. He's doing great work. I don't know. They've got a lot of faith in them. All right. And this pilot, evidently doing great work as well. Now, the wind has been dying down, but let's take a look at the damage it has caused. Now, throughout the evening, I've focused in a lot on the East Coast because that's where we had a lot of airport delays, even ground stop at LaGuardia at one point. But we're starting to see snow squall reports into central and western Pennsylvania. So I do want to focus in on that briefly. In central Pennsylvania, visibility below a quarter of a mile. So yes, the snow hasn't been falling for too, too long. We're not seeing a lot of accumulation, but even wind gusts that are 20, 30 miles an hour can lead to these snow squall situations. Another one in western Pennsylvania, talking about a quarter of a mile visibility, wind gusts 25 knots. Also in the ballpark of 20 miles per hour, just about estimating they're converting from knots to miles per hour. We go to the East Coast and we have more damage down trees. We even have had reports of not just closing roads, which is this report here in New Jersey, but we've had reports of trees falling on cars. Thankfully, the one I have seen, it was unoccupied trees falling onto homes. A lot of dangerous situations here because of the 50, 60 plus mile per hour wind gusts we've had throughout the day. They're improving though. At this point, 26 mile per hour gusts in Boston, 32 in Scranton, 38 in Pittsburgh, but again, once we have the snow and we still have 20, 30 plus mile per hour wind gusts, that can then lead to snow squalls. So a lot of different issues we're seeing as conditions change. We see the temperatures drop behind the front, which is another portion of the story I'll focus on in just a minute, but we still have power outages that we're resolving. Pennsylvania, the numbers are coming down. At one point, we were more than 100,000 customers without power, but all of these states together, I mean, it's tens of thousands, more than 100,000 customers without power. The good news is that those numbers are starting to dwindle down. While we do still have some gusty winds, it's not bad enough in many areas that prohibit the power crews from doing the work. Sometimes there's restrictions about going up in the bucket truck when we still have very strong wind gusts. So it is going to be snow mostly from here on out. Some snow showers, though, we see enough that we get some of those snow squall conditions. We go ahead into Saturday, we have another system that moves through. These are not high impact as far as the precipitation, but it continues the temperature roller coaster that we've been experiencing the same deal into the weekend. A lot of us, we don't see the temperature drop until Sunday into Monday, though. Pittsburgh, you're the exception to the rule.

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