Friday's thunderstorms downed trees, power lines as they quickly swept over Long Island; air quality alert Saturday

Severe thunderstorms moved quickly through Long Island on Friday and brought heavy gusts and a quick burst of rain, but they appeared to spare most of Nassau and Suffolk counties from significant damage, authorities said.

Late Saturday morning the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation issued an air quality health advisory for fine particulate matter on Saturday for the Long Island, New York City metro, Lower Hudson Valley, Upper Hudson Valley and Adirondacks regions due to the impact of smoke from wildfires in Canada. The advisory is in effect from 10 a.m. until 11:59 p.m. Saturday.

On Friday, "there were likely gusts of 40 to 50 mph, and then there were some isolated areas that probably saw gusts around 60 mph," David Stark, a meteorologist stationed at the National Weather Service's Upton office, said on Saturday morning. "The strongest of the storm definitely hit the East End and then out in central Suffolk."

The National Weather Service’s preliminary storm report showed wind readings of 47 mph in Greenport and 42 mph in Orient, along with gusts of 40 mph in Davis Park and Southold.

The Suffolk Police Department said it received multiple reports involving downed trees and wires between around 4 p.m. on Friday and 4 a.m. on Saturday. A police spokesperson said this included a report of a tree and wires down on Wading River Road, near North Street in Manorville on Friday around 4:50 p.m.

In Commack, Michael Lamparillo, 82, said he was in his home on Ashley Circle when he heard a "crack" come from outside as he was watching the approaching rainstorm. 

"It sounded like somebody was hitting somebody else with a baseball bat," Lamparillo said in a phone interview on Saturday. "And I looked out the front, and there was my big tree on my lawn down right across the property and on top of my wife's car and my car."

The tree, about 30 to 40 feet tall, badly damaged their 2018 Toyota and 2018 Subaru. Lamparillo said he never expected the tree to come down and that it looked "very healthy." On Saturday morning, the tree could be seen split at its base and folded over the vehicles.  

Camille Pesce, 77, Lamparillo's wife, said she was out shopping with family when the damage happened and initially couldn't get close to the downed tree to see how bad it was. 

"My car, we could see, pretty much took the brunt," Pesce said. 

Elizabeth Flagler, a PSEG spokeswoman, said in an email that a series of thunderstorms across Long Island knocked out power for 5,895 customers around 4 p.m. In total, around 12,400 PSEG customers lost power due to lightning and heavy rain, Flagler said, but 99% of locations had since had their power restored.

The remaining outages will be resolved this morning, Flagler said.

"The system performed very well during the heavy rain and lightning," Flagler said. "We are seeing the benefits to the storm hardening we have completed over the last 10 years."

Stark, the weather service meteorologist, said the inclement weather was primarily caused by high levels of humidity and a cold front that moved in from the north, which "acted as a triggering mechanism."

That created a brief but powerful period of rainfall that resulted in totals between 0.3 inches and 0.75 inches, according to Stark.

At the Upton weather service site, "a significant downpour" caused 0.35 inches of rainfall in the span of about five minutes, said Stark, but additional accumulation was minimal.

"They just were just fast moving and not enough to produce any significant numbers," Stark said.

Nassau County police didn’t have any reports of significant damage related to the storm.

Friday the air temperature peaked at 91 degrees just before 1 p.m. in Islip. That was 10 degrees above the average high temperature for the date, but 3 degrees below the record high set in 1987

On Saturday and Sunday, the "heat should relax a little bit," weather service meteorologist Matthew Wunsch said on Friday.

High temperatures will drop from the mid to upper 80s on Saturday and go to the low to mid-80s on Sunday.

Saturday will be mostly sunny, according to the weather service. Saturday night is expected to be mostly cloudy, with a low temperature of about 72 degrees.

Another storm system will bring a chance for thunderstorms Sunday before temperatures rise again next week. 

Newsday's Maureen Mullarkey and Nicholas Grasso contributed to this story.

By Joseph Ostapiuk

joseph.ostapiuk@newsday.com@OstapiukJ