rain are still doing a number on long island where officials are warning about serious flooding and storm surge and power outages that could last a week or two. fox weather correspondent steve bender is on the island in shirley, new york. steve? reporter: yes, alicia, this is something that is not letting up through the afternoon, as you can notice the rain and the wind has picked up yet again here on long island. so we re at smith point beach to the east of fire island and the wind is now gusting 30 to 40 miles per hour so we know tropical storm henri made landfall near westerly, new jersey. we re 70 to 80 miles from that and we re feeling the outer bands. it s the counterclockwise rotation allowing the rain to sit over of long island and this hasn t let up. it s been going on since really about 5:00 a.m. this morning. so the ground is fully saturated. the water is now starting to pond on the roads and we re starting to see that urban and
meteorologist rick reichmuth with the latest forecast. what can you tell us? hey, benjamin. as steve was talking about, it s slowing down in forward progression, that means more rain is going to fall because it has more time to sit in one spot. this is the image of the life of henri, started way to the east of bermuda, went to the south and then curled way back up, very atypical trajectory for a storm like this. we had massive storms yesterday and overnight across parts of tennessee.e. we re going to be covering not associated with this tropical storm or hurricane but it appears at this point over a dozen fatalities so a sto that is not getting much attention, we re going to talk about. get back to henri here. center of the storm made landfall on the border of connecticut and into rhode island. you notice all of the moisture is towards the west of this storm, the left side. a lot of times in tropical systems we see most of the moisture on the right side. not the case, this storm is
rain, particularly the western side of the state. governor ned lamont spoke an hour and-a-half ago. this is what he said about his biggest concern moving forward. i m concerned about that. i think that s the biggest risk that we have right now. as you know, we had a lot of rain over the last week. the topsoil is thin. you have rock underneath. that means the topsoil is filling up like a sponge fills with water. that water is pouring off right now. reporter: so yeah, heavy rain is the big concern for connecticut and for much of those that are getting affected by the rest of this storm. the issue is obviously with the rain the big oak trees can fall on power lines. this is just one of many photos we re starting to see of trees falling over homes and cars and on shower lines. so far, 78,000 customers in rhode island, the most in the nation, are now without power. in connecticut, that number is 32,000 and in new jersey it s
we have fox team coverage. steve bender is live on long island, new york. first, to brian llenas the in connecticut. reporter: look, we are in old saybrook, the southeastern portion of connecticut. the tropical storm henri made landfall 36 miles west of here. the sun is out and the worst is by us and the deck hands here have done a good job of tying up the boats. you can see well, take a look at the boats, they re still there. take a look at this video, you ll see it was windy, it was there was rain, about 45, 60-mile-an-hour gusts in the southeastern portion of connecticut. the tropical storm henri did essentially jog a little bit to the east and that was good news for connecticut in terms of wind. dodged a bullet on the wind end of things. when it comes to the rain, while we were on the wet side of this tropical storm in connecticut, continues to get pounded by
troops, i attended a briefing where we had urban search and rescue team, some coming from buffalo to work with us, really gives a sense of how people come together when have you a crisis like this and a storm like this. benjamin: communities come together. it s really important. what is your biggest concern right now? well, this storm isn t over yet. we are cautiously optimistic that we avoided the worst predicted impacts but this storms is in some ways breaking apart and we re going to continue to see heavy bands of rain, torrential rain at times. we ve gotten reports of localized flooding, heavy high winds still especially out on the east end and the concern is as this storm continues to dump rain through the night into monday morning, that that saturation combined with