Whipping Winds, Snow Knock Power Out in Fair Lawn, Saddle Brook

Saddle Brook, which was just 107 customers from full power restoration Wednesday morning, has experienced a significant setback with Winter Storm Athena.

PSEG is now reporting between 501 and 2000 outages in the township, including three schools, and Police Chief Bob Kugler said numerous traffic lights have also been knocked out.

Kugler said the department has grown so accustomed to handling traffic signal outages by now that on-duty patrols had the intersections with downed signals coned off within 15 minutes.

"We're getting good at this," he said via text. "It's normal operations now!"

Kugler said traffic signals in Saddle Brook are out at:

• Market Street and Fifth Street
• Market Street and Erie Street
• N.Midland Avenue and New Pehle Avenue
• N.Midland Avenue and Molnar Drive
• Mayhill Street by A&P

Saddle Brook public schools will have a delayed opening Thursday, and Superintendent Kathryn Fedina will decide by 6 a.m. whether to cancel school entirely.

In Fair Lawn, outages aren't currently as severe, but appear to be centered in the southeast side of town. Deputy emergency management coordinator Neil Shore said he'd received four calls for outages on Elden Place and multiple residents have reported that the area east of Broadway and Fair Lawn Parkway toward the Amsterdam streets is without power.

Wind gusts, currently reaching close to 40 miles per hour, are expected to taper off over the next couple hours and calm overnight. Another 1.4 inches of snow is still expected to fall on top of what's already on the ground, according to the National Weather Service's latest forecast.

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