Power Out In NYC - Weather To Blame?

UPDATE: Bloomberg.com says that the outage took place from approximately 3:45 to 4:45 PM and affected over 136,000 homes and businesses. Record usage from August last year was not exceeded, but the power company (ConEd) had no word on what caused the outage. WABC reported an explosion at a substation in The Bronx [WikiPedia] at 3:42 PM. Con Ed Chief Executive Kevin Burke admitted lightning was a possibility (WABC) but would not confirm the explosion (Bloomberg.com).

The map originally posted below shows heavy lightning strikes in the Bronx area but many of these took place between 4:30 and 5:00. Based on a radar image from 3:45 PM (courtesy AccuWeather.com RadarPlus, you can also download a loop), the most intense part of the storm remained south of the Bronx but WABC's later report from ConEd indicated that the problem started at "a substation in Queens [WikiPedia]" which is south of the Bronx... so I would say that lightning was striking in the area at the time. Of course, lightning was hitting the ground tens of thousands of times today in the Northeast so this would have had to have been an unusual strike in an unusual place.

ORIGINAL POST:

Breaking news... Fox News reports a large power outage in New York City... not only is today likely a record power usage day due to extreme heat, a thunderstorm is moving through the city as we speak (5 PM). More information coming soon. Most of the lightning has stayed north of the city thus far - two hour lightning strikes from AccuWeather.com LightningPlus are shown below.