October Snow Falls in Malverne - West Hempstead, Causes Some Outages

UPDATE: As of Sunday morning, roughly two dozen Long Island Power Authority customers in Malverne and West Hempstead were experiencing outages. LIPA posted on its Web site Saturday night that the company was experiencing outages across Long Island "due to high winds, heavy rain and wet snow."

LIPA says it has increased staffing for both field crews and customer service personnel and will continue to work to restore power as quickly and safely as possible throughout the overnight. In most cases, customers can expect to have their power restored within five hours, according to LIPA, but if you encounter any downed wire, you should assume it is a live electric wire and report it immediately to LIPA at 1-800-490-0075 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week). If you provide a phone number, the company can call you back when service restoration updates become available.

Sure many people dream of a white Christmas, but a white Halloween?

A slushy mix of rain and snow started falling in the Malverne-West Hempstead area Saturday afternoon, forcing some of the weekend festivities to move indoors including the Malverne Youth Board's Raggamuffin Parade. (Look for photos later today.)

The storm also caused a few power outages (less than five) in the West Hempstead area, near Eagle Avenue, around noon. The Long Island Power Authority put its customers on notice, posting this announcement on their Web site:

"With the potential for severe weather throughout the day, LIPA is prepared to respond to any power outages that may occur and to restore power as quickly and safely as possible.  If you encounter any downed wire, you should assume it is a live electric wire and report it immediately to LIPA at 1-800-490-0075 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week).  When reporting an outage, we encourage you to use the option of providing a phone number so that we can call you back when service restoration updates become available."

According to weather.com, Malverne and West Hempstead will see rain and snow falling throughout today, turning to just snow tonight with accumulations of about 1 to 2 inches.

Stay with Patch for more local weather updates.