One day after Tropical Storm Isaias swept through the New York region, snapping trees and branches, utility crews were struggling to restore power to nearly 2.5 million customers as officials acknowledged that some outages could linger for days.
On Wednesday morning, the most widespread outages were reported in northern New Jersey, suburbs just north of New York City and much of the entire state of Connecticut.
The scale of the damage was extensive: Con Edison reported that the outage in its service area in New York City and Westchester County was second only to Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“We’ve had over 16,000 service requests for downed trees, which I think is the most we’ve ever had in the city,” Deanne Criswell, the city’s emergency management commissioner, said in an interview on Wednesday morning with the television station WPIX.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said at a news conference on Wednesday morning that while many people should expect to have their power restored on Wednesday, some outages could continue for longer.
“We’ve got to be very realistic,” the governor said. “This could be a number of days for folks.”
He said earlier on Wednesday morning that the damage could have been worse if the storm had not moved so quickly through the area. “Like a knife through hot butter,’’ he told a local radio station.
By Wednesday morning, the immediate threat of strong winds and heavy rains had passed, as the storm had crossed into Canada and was expected to dissipate on Thursday.
But reports of damage could be found all along the path that Isaias took up the East Coast on Tuesday after making landfall in North Carolina. The storm left a trail of flood and fires, with some of its most devastating effects caused by a series of tornadoes that it spawned in several states — a scene that many officials said was another layer of pain for communities already struggling with the coronavirus.
Two people who were killed when a tornado struck a neighborhood in northeast North Carolina. A woman died in St. Mary’s County, Md., when a tree toppled by the winds landed on her vehicle.
In New York City, a 60-year-old man who was sitting on the passenger side of a car in Briarwood, Queens, was killed on Tuesday when a tree fell on the vehicle and a 49-year-old woman was critically injured when she was struck by a falling tree branch in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the police said.
On Wednesday morning, residents emerged from their homes to find toppled trees, downed power lines and broken branches littering the streets and crushing vehicles. Many streets were still blocked off to vehicles by trees.
Some rail service was still suspended as workers cleared tracks of trees and other debris and repair signals, according to the Long Island Rail Road.
Scott G. Morgan, the administrator and emergency management coordinator for Upper Township, N.J., a seaside community near the southern tip of the state, said the authorities were surveying damage caused by a tornado that touched down Tuesday morning.
The property damage was extensive, he said, but there were no reports of injuries and only one family was displaced.
“It could have been significantly worse,” Mr. Morgan said in an interview as he used a drone to survey the damage. “We’re not used to tornadoes in this area.”
The tornado came in off the Atlantic Ocean near Strathmere, N.J., but did not immediately make landfall. It left a corridor of downed trees and vegetation on either side of the Garden State Parkway, which the tornado had crossed over.
“You can see a definite cut right through the woods on either side,” he said.
Mr. Morgan had already spent months dealing with another crisis: the coronavirus pandemic. He offered a grim chuckle when asked what it was like to be handling the clean up from a tornado, which he said was rare for that area of South Jersey.
“It’s like I wish 2020 would not have even shown its face,” Mr. Morgan said. “It’s just been one hellacious year — for all of us.”
Officials in Teaneck, N.J., said on Tuesday night that 96 trees were down as well as 85 calls for wires down. Ten homes sustained significant damage from fallen trees.
In Brewster, about 60 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, the stoplights on State Route 22 remained out Wednesday morning. Drivers inched their way into busy intersections and waited for considerate drivers to allow them through.
Greg Semmeles, the owner of Brewster Wine and Liquor, stood outside his shop watching the traffic navigating the intersections.
“I’m surprised I’m still out of power,” he said. “Usually they get businesses up and running first, and the lights on 22 still being out, that’s not a good sign.”
Mr. Semmeles, who lives in New Fairfield, Conn., said he was lucky. His liquor store was considered essential and allowed to remain open during the worst of the pandemic in New York. Even now, the power loss was mostly an inconvenience.
“Most of my stuff isn’t perishable, except for the ice,” he said. “And I can still take cash.”
Chief Paul J. Rickard of the Mount Hope Police Department in Orange County, N.Y., said in a video on Wednesday morning that the county’s 9-1-1 emergency line had still not been restored after being knocked out by the storm.
“We still have a great number of people in town without phone and electrical service,” Chief Rickard said.
Tracey Tully and Debra West contributed reporting.