Tall Ships And Power Outages, as Brooklyn Celebrates The Nation's 250th Birthday

As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday, Brooklynites were dealing with multiple inescapable issues: a heat wave, downed trees from a Friday night storm and power outages. 

A fast-moving but powerful rainstorm swept through Brooklyn early Friday evening, toppling trees and sending late-day beachgoers scrambling for cover.

The power outages started on Friday, with thousands of northern Brooklyn residents, including in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bedford Stuyvesant, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, asked to conserve energy by Con Edison as crews fixed equipment. By the end of Friday, about 7,000 Brooklyn residents lost power, according to Con Ed. 

As of Saturday midday, there were hundreds of people who were out of power in Bushwick, Flatbush, Borough Park, Gravesend, Canarsie and Marine Park, according to the Con Ed outage map.

Saturday will be the last day of extreme heat, with maximum heat indices just over 105 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service. Thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening could be severe, mainly across northeast NJ and NYC. Damaging winds and localized flash flooding are possible, according to NWS. 

On a celebratory note, a fleet of 43 tall ships — 21 Class A vessels ranging from 161 to 378 feet in length, joined by 22 Class B ships — sailed under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge as part of Sail4th 250. 

Simultaneously, there was also the International Aerial Review — 150 to 185 aircraft led by the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels — that flew over the New York Harbor. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday also spoke reflectively to New Yorkers on where he thinks the nation stands. 

"We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions," he said. "We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands — those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone — and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few."