A fierce, fast-moving thunderstorm packing winds as high as 100 mph slammed through northeast Queens and portions of Nassau County yesterday, toppling trees, downing power lines and ripping off roofs.
The afternoon storm, which affected service on two branches of the Long Island Rail Road, dropped hail the size of golf balls in some areas.
Hardest hit in Nassau were Great Neck and East Hills, the National Weather Service said. In the city, the Douglaston and Whitestone sections of Queens got socked, with multiple power lines and trees down, said Office of Emergency Management spokesman Seth Andrews.
Con Ed said the storm initially knocked out power to 2,100 customers in Brooklyn and Queens.
“I saw a huge wind and sparks coming from the telephone pole. I was screaming,” said 10-year-old Danielle Tirado of Westmoreland Street in Douglaston.
There were no reports of injuries in the city or in Nassau County.
Long Island Power Authority spokeswoman Vanessa Baird-Streeter said 36,000 customers were without power at the height of the storm.
“Mostly, we are seeing large trees coming down on power lines. We saw some roofs blown off homes and some damages to other buildings like broken glass,” she said.
Mercedes Pagan of Great Neck said, “It only lasted about 10 minutes, but it was a rough 10-minute storm.
“I was running on Middle Neck Road, ducking branches falling off trees. I’m lucky I wasn’t hit.”
While some New Yorkers who saw the sky turn black thought a tornado had hit, the National Weather Service said they were wrong.
“We would classify it as a microburst, not a tornado,” said NWS meteorologist Ross Dickman. “The winds were straight line winds, they weren’t rotating. You didn’t have the funnel coming out of the clouds.”
He said such microbursts can have winds close to 100 mph.