STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
If you're like me, you were following messages from people up and down the East Coast over the weekend. Some people had power, some people did not because of a slow-moving storm called a nor'easter. The name comes from winds that blow out of the northeast. David Wright of Rhode Island's Ocean State Media has been covering the storm from Long Island. David, good morning.
DAVID WRIGHT, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: How'd things go in Greenport, New York?
WRIGHT: It was pretty intense. I had to take a ferry across Long Island Sound to get here Friday afternoon. It turned out to be the last one. The storm just started to gather out on the open water. It was rough going - rough enough to set off all the car alarms.
INSKEEP: Wow.
WRIGHT: Yeah. The view out the window kind of lurched all the way across. One minute you're seeing white-capped waves. The next minute you're seeing the horizon, all the way across. And they ended up canceling all the ferries after that, late Friday and all day Saturday. Mine was the last one.
And here in Greenport, the water at high tide spilled up over the docks. It flooded the streets closest to the harbor. But down in the South Fork, I think, out by the Hamptons is where you saw a bigger impact. In Montauk, some of the waves were 18 feet high.
INSKEEP: Wow.
WRIGHT: Yeah. Now the winds have died down, still pouring with rain. But here, as in most places along the coast, I think, the storm's bark was worse than its bite.
INSKEEP: OK. That's good. But are there other areas up and down the coast that were more deeply affected?
WRIGHT: For sure. Some coastal towns in New Jersey had water that was waist deep. New York City - they clocked winds as high as 70 miles an hour, and one Brooklyn man - turned out to be a city worker walking near a playground - was struck and killed by a falling tree. In Boston, the storm led to the cancellation of 20% of the flights out of Logan, and the Red Sox had to move their season finale down to Florida. They were playing against the Cubs, supposed to be out of Fenway. Instead, they played at the Rays' stadium in Tampa-St. Pete. And out on Nantucket - this may be the most interesting thing - the storm deposited a huge chunk of an old shipwreck onto the beach on the south shore. It's believed to be part of a schooner that sank in 1884 on its way from New Orleans to Boston.
INSKEEP: Amazing. Now, inland, people were losing power, including some relatives of mine. Where does that stand now?
WRIGHT: Lot of people lost power out in New Jersey - at the storm's peak, more than 180,000 customers. Those numbers tended to drop as the storm moved up the coast and inland. Still plenty of power outages, work crews still busy trying to restore them. But to put it in context, in New Jersey, as of this morning, 3,000 outages - just a few - fewer than that, actually, and fewer than Hawaii, where they're dealing with Hurricane Nolo. Lot of those outages caused by falling trees. This was definitely a kind of weekend where you double-check your insurance policy and take seriously the phrase, don't park under a tree.
INSKEEP: Wow (laughter). David, I'm still thinking about your trip across on the ferry and just being able to see the whitecaps and the horizon, so I'm going to make a reading recommendation here.
WRIGHT: Not "The Perfect Storm," I hope.
INSKEEP: No, not "The Perfect Storm." It's a shorter one - Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" - a short story about four guys who are trapped on a boat on the water and they can't see anything beyond the next wave.
WRIGHT: Awesome. I'll check it out.
INSKEEP: OK. David Wright with Rhode Island's Ocean State Media, currently in Greenport, New York. Thanks.
WRIGHT: Thanks, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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