Yesterday's windy weather has at least one casualty: According to WNBC, power lines in NJ. Jersey Central Power & Light's commercial power lines "fell across the tracks in Montville," prompting the Montclair-Boonton line to be closed for a while. The line is open again, but this means one-hour delays for the Northeast Corridor, NJ Coast and Raritan Valley lines. NJ Transit and Lakeland buses are honoring rail tickets. Interestingly, WCBS 2 says the problems are......

Although the city was mostly spared, wind and rain caused quite a mess across the metro area last night. About twenty thousand homes lost power, including 900 in Queens and 300 in the Bronx. The rain is not over! There is one more line of storms headed our way. The rain is currently over central New Jersey and will pass through the city this morning. Skies should rapidly clear in the early afternoon. Until then,......

Untitled, by Pabo76 at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a power outage on Cranford St. and Amboy Rd. on Staten Island, a bank robbery on East Gun Hill Rd. in the Bronx, and a carjacking on the Horace Harding Expressway and 108th St. in Queens. Update on the 14-year-old girl who was killed and stuffed into a boiler by her father: The ME's office found that she was pregnant - and they are testing......

Sponge Bob! I am your father!, by dcschaub, at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on East 169th St. and Franklin Ave. in the Bronx, an aircraft emergency at Laguardia in Queens, and a power outage on Laconia Ave. in the Bronx. The suit about seizing private property for another private owner in the name of public gain will move to the Supreme Court after a 3-judge panel ruled that Bruce Ratner's......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a power outage on Beach Channel Dr. in Queens, a shooting on Nostrand Ave. in Brooklyn, and a car in the water at Rockaway and Brookville Blvds. in Queens. If you think you're buying a super-cheap iPod at a Mom and Pop electronics store, you're probably buying a fake. Some Queens residents will be relieved to know that LIRR trains will no longer blast their horns for 15 to......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a power outage on Country Club Rd. in the Bronx, an abduction on 89th St. and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Decatur St. in Brooklyn. A buyer spent $54,000 to purchase a bottle of 60-year-old Macallan scotch at auction, bottled in 1926. Police responding to an accident call in Washington Heights were themselves the victims of a hit-and-run, when rear-ended by a speeding sedan. The driver......

Earlier this afternoon, an A/C power outage along the 7 line caused service to stop in both directions. Apparently one of the signals went out at 1:35PM, and the MTA wasn't completely sure when it would be fixed. Other parts of the 7 came back and now, thankfully, 7 service is back and running in time for the rush hour. And earlier this morning, reader Faye tells us about her horrible commute from the......

Thirty years ago tonight, New York City lost electricity when a Con Ed substation was hit by lightning strikes and a "cascading effect" caused the system to shut down around 9PM. And NYC, as well as parts of Westchester County, were powerless for over a day in the sweltering heart of the summer. Subways were stuck, mobs set fires and stores were looted. It was also the summer that other dramas gripped the city......

Wednesday power woes weren't just for parts of the Bronx and Manhattan: Over 4,000 (or 8,000, depending on what you read) Queens residents were without power when last night's storm made its presence known. In fact, two hours after the MTA said LIRR service was a-okay after the Bronx-Manhattan power outage, the rain screwed up Long Island Rail Road track signals, causing hours of delays after service was suspended. In this instance, we feel......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on Elliot Ave. in Queens, a pedestrian struck on West 86th St. and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan, and a stabbing on Cozine Ave. in Brooklyn. The brother of murdered Councilman James Davis decried the threats of assassination against another councilman from Charles Barron's chief of staff. A man robbed a sunbathing woman in Central Park of her iPod and wallet, then also demanded a kiss before departing.......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a power outage on Beach Channel Drive in Queens, a shooting on Hale Ave. in Brooklyn, and a shooting at East 157th St. and Cortland Ave. in the Bronx. The Gowanus Lounge has a post on the giant inflatable water slide that Thor Equities intends to erect at Coney Island. The slide manufacturer's web site advertises that when it comes to entertaining children "size does matter," so good luck......

Yesterday's thunderstorm left its mark around the area. Just under 2,000 homes were without power in the five boroughs (though, given Con Ed's counting, that could be many times more) while thousands of homes in Westchester, New Jersey and Connecticut were also powerless. About an inch of rain fell in Central Park. The winds were fierce: According to AccuWeather, the winds were "just short of hurricane force," and the Post reports winds were at 70......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A shooting in Brooklyn, a power outage in Queens, and scaffolding that fell on the 5 tracks - subway service on the 2 and 5 is messed up! A Bronx man pleaded guilty to terror plotting; Tarik Shah will serve no more than 15 years for offering to teach Al Qaeda operatives "how to wage jihad with hand-to-hand combat" New lawsuit to stop the Atlantic Yards lawsuit, on the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A power outage in Beach Channel, Queens, a jumper on the George Washington Bridge, and a pedestrian struck near Tottenville High School on Staten Island It's damn cold, but you should be warm(ish) at home; building owners are required to provide heat and hot water during "heat season" The doctor who claimed he had been attacked by a group of thugs died and the medical examiner isn't sure how......

On May 25, 2006, there was a power outage along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor line, a heavily traveled route that stranded over a hundred trains from Amtrak, NJ Transit and other transit companies. Now, nine months later, Amtrak has revealed what went wrong - and it's a doozy. The NY Times reports:A 4-year-old computer in Philadelphia failed to execute a single command given 36 hours earlier, after maintenance had been done on the evening of......

Last year ended much as it began -warm, warm, warm. Last month was the third warmest December since records began in 1869. The average temperature in Central Park last year was 56.8 degrees, making 2006 the sixth warmest year on record. Seven of the city's ten warmest years have occurred since 1990. The first weather highlight last year was January's warmth. We saw record-breaking warm days, and the month was nearly nine degrees above......

With the weather turning quite brisk today, it's almost hard to remember that back in stifling July heat, many neighborhoods were without power for days and days. Almost. Yesterday, Con Ed released a 600 page report detailing what happened, why they decided not to shut down the network, and why trying to fix the problem caused delays. All in all, Con Ed is saying it wasn't really their fault - it was the equipment!......

The Office of Emergency Management has decided to stop relying on Con Ed-supplied information on power outages, after the July Queens blackout mess that affected about 300,000. OEM Commissioner Joseph Bruno said that the fact that Con Ed said only 1700 customers were without power on July 20, later raising it to 25,000 customers (and customers equal entire buildings, with indeterminate number of people in them), was cause for the city to start sending canvassers......

-- Oh how we love those crazy hipsters and their artfully messy clothes! -- Eleven Egyptian students disappeared at JFK a couple of weeks ago, setting off a nationwide manhunt. They're probably just hanging out at the food-court hitting on stewardesses! -- AO Scott says Oliver Stone's World Trade Center is filled with "visual grandeur, sweeping emotion and heightened, sometimes overwrought, drama." -- Speaking of September 11th, WTC responders who missed the deadline are......

Yesterday was the third day of the August heat wave, but the sprinkling of rain in the early evening and cooler weather today and the weekend should hopefully bring relief to us all. And it looks like Con Ed managed to avoid a bigger blackout when feeder cables on the East Side failed and manholes exploded in the area as well; of course, Con Ed sending its own non-essential employees home certainly freaked everyone......

Gothamist will admit it: We're afraid of a widespread power outage, given what happened in Queens two weeks ago and the unstable nature of what Con Ed's got going on. So we went to check the city's energy conservation tips:- Set your air conditioner thermostat no lower than 78 degrees — a 75-degree setting uses 18 percent more electricity and a 72-degree setting uses 39 percent more electricity. This setting allows for sufficient cooling while......

Con Ed has pretty crappy luck. No sooner than a few hours after announcing that most of the Queens neighborhoods plagued by a week and a half power outage had electricity did three feeder cables in Staten Island fail. Luckily, this power outage that hit 16,000 customers (about one in every 10 Con Ed customers on SI, according to the Advance) only lasted six hours, ending around 10PM. Which meant Mayor Bloomberg had to cancel......

- Last Friday we got a reminder from the Straphangers Campaign to email or fax questions to MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow as he'll be answering questions from the public in the Daily News (email AskKalikow@nydailynews.com or fax 212-643-783). We doubt our suggested question of "Why are you such a terrible leader who demoralizes not just the unions, but riders as well with your poor decisions?" or "Are you deliberately trying to sabotage the MTA's......

Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Kelly, and representatives from the Port Authority and FBI gave a press conference about the tunnel terror plot a few hours ago. This morning, the Daily News revealed that officials had "foiled" a plot to flood the city Katrina-style (no matter how technically unfeasible it would be), sending people into a tailspin, both the "crap, no" and the "the government is making this too big a deal" kinds. From the......

Even though we live in a "See Something, Say Something" subway society, it turns out that the MTA's evacuation plans are the same ones from before Spetember 11. AMNY explains:New hires, such as motormen, conductors and cleaners, generally receive several hours of evacuation training at the Coney Island Rail Yards, then get a refresher course once every three years. In the interim, workers are issued the same 21/2-page, 17-point bulletin that provides general instructions on......

Whoa, tonight's wild thunderstorm has hit Staten Island in a serious way: There's an island-wide power outage right now, not to mention "starting fires, flooding streets, causing car crashes downing tree branches," according to SILive. Also, we're hearing that a police officer was struck by lightning. Be careful out there! There will be thunderstorms tomorrow as well. Photograph of lightning in the sky from barek176 on Flickr Here's another good shot of a strike--......

Senator Charles Schumer wants Thursday's power outage along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor to create a panel to investigate the outage's cause. Which worried Gothamist, because the implication seems to be that the incident wouldn't be investigated otherwise (well, Amtrak is "investigating"). And we'd hope that an outage that would leave thousands of commuters stranded - especially the commuters trapped in the trains that were in tunnels. Anyway, Schumer wants to convene a blue ribbon panel of......

At present, trains on Amtrak and NJ Transit are running on schedule, but commuters are wary (and weary) after yesterday's power outage along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor that stopped service for both train system between Queens and Washington DC. This was the biggest transit power failure since, oh, the blackout of 2003 (and, yes, we heard words like "cascading" and "tripping circuitbreakers" on the news last night and cringed, too). Officials are unsure of what......

The busiest - and most profitable - section of Amtrak's routes, the Northeast Corridor Line, has suffered a major power outage this morning from DC to Queens. At least four trains - three NJ Transit and one Amtrak - were stuck in the tunnel under the Hudson River, and one is stuck in a tunnel outside Baltimore. We're hearing that Amtrak is bringing in diesel-powered trains to push the trains out. Amtrak says power......

Mother Nature must have realized she ignored us during the summer, as yesterday's rainfall broke records and caused lots of problems. Over 3.5" inches of rain fell yesterday, and with rain on deck for today and tomorrow, it's possible October's rainfall will exceed the 10.53" that fell in July, August and September combined. The NY Times spoke to an AccuWeather meteorologist, who said with the winds coming, it'll be "our first really good northeaster." Well,......