By Mark Scott
Buffalo, NY – The remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through Western New York late Sunday night. The wind was more of a problem than the rain.
Wind gusts exceeding 50 miles per hour brought down tree limbs and power lines. The Southern Tier counties of Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany were the hardest hit, where more than 42-hundred National Grid customers were still without power as of late Monday morning. About 700 were without service in Erie County. But the utility is saying power may not be restored for everyone until late Tuesday night.
A peak gust of 59 miles per hour was recorded in Niagara Falls.
Less than a tenth-of-an-inch of rain fell from the storm.
State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is warning New Yorkers to be on the lookout for possible gas gouging in the wake of Hurricane Ike.
State law does not allow the oil industry to use a natural disaster to drastically raise prices unless those increases are directly attributable to costs from the storm. The Triple A is reporting today the average gasoline price in the region is $3.90, up a little more than two cents from Sunday.
Cuomo says the AG's office fined a dozen gas stations in New York $63,000 for price gouging following Hurricane Katrina three years ago.