High Winds, Heavy Rain To Hit Hudson Valley Before Freeze

HUDSON VALLEY, NY — A cold front will cross the region overnight bringing high winds, up to an inch of rain, a thunderstorm or two, and then a sudden freeze.

Wind advisories have been issued from 10 p.m. until Friday morning.

While the Hudson Valley isn't expected to get the damaging winds due to hit Long Island and southeastern Connecticut, it'll be windy enough to knock down scattered to numerous tree limbs and blow around unsecured objects. Isolated to scattered trees and power lines could be downed. Travel will be difficult, especially for high profile vehicles, the NWS warned.

"The clouds and rainfall should help keep a low-level temperature inversion in place," said Alex Marra and Bill Potter of Hudson Valley Weather. "That is likely to limit the strength of the wind gusts that make it to the surface, especially in the lower elevations. But higher elevations and mountains could surely see gusts over 50 mph."

Rain will be heavy at times. Minor urban and poor drainage flooding is possible. Localized ice jam flooding is possible across interior rivers and streams.

"Once the weather clears enough to safely assess damage and begin electric service restoration, crews will give priority to clearing downed wires blocking roads and making repairs to critical and emergency facilities (police and fire stations, and hospitals, for example) and to those locations that will restore power to the most customers quickly," said Mike Donovan of O&R. "Then, crews will restore smaller outages and individual customers’ outages."

That will be made more difficult by a sudden freeze. On the tail of the front, temperatures will slide dramatically — from the mid-50s at 7 a.m. to the low 30s by 7 p.m.

Here's the 48-hour forecast based on southern Westchester County: