Nassau digs out after nor'easter drops nearly a foot of snow across the county

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Updated 10 a.m. March 22: No doubt, Town of Hempstead Supervisor Laura Gillen, of Rockville Centre, was right: Wednesday's nor'easter, though it appeared to be fading fast in the afternoon, was not over.

The National Weather Service was predicting five to nine inches of snow overnight, and the storm brought that and more. A weather observer in North Merrick reported 11.6 inches of snow early Thursday morning. As of 6:30 a.m., it was still snowing across Nassau, though the storm was expected to taper off around 10 or 11 a.m.

Many school districts were on a two-hour delayed start. Others, like Bellmore-Merrick, East Meadow, Elmont and Wantagh, closed for the day. Still others were to open at normal time. A number of districts had begun the day with a delayed start only to cancel classes early in the morning. Check your local listings.

Town of Hempstead Supervisor Laura Gillen, of Rockville Centre, was in Levittown, Point Lookout and Franklin Square delivering pizzas to plow crews that had to work the overnight shift clearing roads on Wednesday evening. "It’s going to be a long night and early morning for our amazing workforce as this nor’easter intensifies," Gillen wrote on her Twitter page.

There were roughly 3,000 outages out of a million homes and businesses as of 6:30 a.m. Thursday, according to PSEG-LI. "While we haven't experienced significant damage related to today's storm, our personnel stand ready to respond to any power outages should they occur," said John O'Connell, the utility's vice president of transmission and distribution. "We're proud of the fact that our hardworking crews were able to restore electricity safely and quickly to customers who lost power from the nor'easters earlier this month."

To report downed wires or power outages, customers should call PSEG-LI at (800) 490-0075

Check for updates using the utility's outage map at https://outagemap.psegliny.com/

Do not run any gasoline-powered engines, including generators, in a garage or any other enclosed space, the utility warns, and do not use your oven to heat your home.

This latest storm did cause more havoc for Nassau County high school athletics, which have been greatly impacted by the weather since spring practices began March 7. Today's schedule, which called for 20 non-league games across three sports (softball, girls' lacrosse and boys' lacrosse) were canceled in full. Thursday's schedule, which includes a handful of girls' lacrosse league openers, is also in jeopardy.

Tony Bellissimo contributed to this story. It will be updated.