NEW YORK -- An evening thunderstorm swept through the New York area Friday, leaving one man dead, a suburban county in a state of emergency and thousands without electricity into Saturday evening.
Nathan Maddox, 25, was struck and killed by lightning Friday night as he watched the storm from a downtown rooftop, police said.
The Manhattan resident was atop a building on Broome Street in Little Italy with his girlfriend and another companion when he was hit by a lightning bolt around 8:30 p.m., said Det. Cheryl Cox.
He was taken in critical condition to NYU Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Cox said.
Lightning struck the ground between 5,000 and 7,000 times across the New York metropolitan area between 5:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. during a storm that deposited more than an inch of rain, said National Weather Service meteorologist Jeffrey Tongue.
In Putnam County, one-third of the county -- about 10,000 homes -- were without electricity last night, according to County Executive Robert Bondi, who declared the county in a state of emergency.
Thirty-one crews from Western New York were called in to help restore power to the county and repair miles of downed utility lines and snapped utility poles, he said.
"It was a limited state of emergency," said Bondi. "There was no curfew or travel restrictions." By calling the emergency, Bondi was able to suspend regulations that limited how much overtime and extra resources the New York State Electric and Gas company, which provides electricity to the region, could dedicate to the blackout.
About 2,000 homes, mostly in rural areas, remained without power Saturday evening and the county was still in a state of emergency.
Full power was not expected back until Sunday night.
There were 31,000 outages in New York's five boroughs and Westchester County, including 14,000 outages in Staten Island, and 16,000 in Westchester, said D. Joy Faber, a spokeswoman for Con Edison.
Power to 9,136 customers in the region had still not been restored at 3 p.m. Saturday, Faber said. Most of those customers without power -- 8,691 -- were in Westchester County.
"The system that came through was extremely severe," Faber said. "Several crews have been working throughout the night and day to restore service as quickly as possible."
On Long Island, 16,491 customers lost power in the storm, but service was restored to all but 1,340 by 4 p.m. Saturday, said Lynda Nicolino of the Long Island Power Authority.
"We hope to have everyone done by this evening," she said.
The weather will be clear with patchy fog through Sunday night in the New York City metropolitan area and surrounding counties, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Stalker. Storms are expected to return on Monday, he said.
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