I live near Hudson, NY., on the shore of the Hudson River, 100 miles north of NYC. Our electrical power went off at 4:14 pm and just came back at 7:25 pm--what a relief.
I experienced an outage similar to this in Nov., 1965.
News just said that the outage today was the result of a lightning bolt striking power transmitters in Niagara, NY. I doubt it.
Your suspicions echo mine. I checked 24 hour weather data for Niagara Falls on AccuWeather on the Web. Their history of weather conditions for Niagara Falls for 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. today showed a high pressure system over the area with a mostly sunny sky all afternoon (as it's been in Western PA). How do you get a lightning bolt with no thunderstorms and no rain indicated? Any Freepers from Niagara Falls who can confirm this? The source for the lightning bolt theory was Chretien who's blaming the U.S. for the failure. CNN confirmed the cause as a lightning bolt in Niagara Falls. What's going on here?
I'm a longtime lurker who's posting for the first time, so please excuse any errors!