Southern Dutchess was the worst to get hit by the powerful storms that ripped through the Hudson Valley on Tuesday afternoon. There were reports of hail in most parts of Dutchess County, from Poughkeepsie to Red Hook to Beacon. There have been reports of wind gusts of 78 miles per hour in the Beacon area. There were record lighting strikes--trust me I was driving it in. According to Central Hudson, 1,000 lighting strikes per hour were recorded.

Reg Osterhoudt
Reg Osterhoudt
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With that opening paragraph, there is no doubt that a slew of power outages resulted from the storm. Central Hudson is reporting some 72,000 customers off the grid. According to the utility, they have crews out doing damage assessment. They have about 100 mutual aid line workers from the Midwest arriving to help with power restoration on top of their team of more than 300 line and tree personnel.

Photo By Cathy Buchak
Photo By Cathy Buchak
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At this point, Central Hudson says restoration work could last through Thursday or later. A quick look at the restoration map on the Central Hudson website, shows what we said at the top of this article. Southern Dutchess, Beacon, Wappingers and Fishkill were hit the hardest. Red zones on the map indicate massive power outages. A ton of localized power outages happened as well throughout the entire Central Hudson area.

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