WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) – Louise Donase was stuck in traffic on the Tappan Zee Bridge, marveling as gusts of wind tore the mudflaps from the trucks around her. Then the green tractor-trailer on her right was blown over, right onto her brand new Honda.

“The noise was deafening,” she said. “It came over right onto my car and the SUV in front of me. … I was afraid the truck would ignite.”

The frightening accident, at about 8 a.m., resulted in the closing of the bridge over the Hudson River and was emblematic of a rainy, wind-swept Wednesday that made travel slow, sometimes adventurous and in one case deadly.

Another tractor-trailer flipped on the George Washington Bridge. Metro-North Railroad workers with chain saws had to attack a tree that fell across three tracks in the Bronx and was hit by the 6:23 a.m. train from New Haven, Conn. And out in the bay, a New York Waterway ferry running from Monmouth County, N.J., to the southern tip of Manhattan met some high seas that reached the passenger deck and prompted a rush for the life preservers.

“When it first flooded the front of the boat, everybody thought it was going to sink,” said passenger Robert Steele.

The National Weather Service reported wind gusts of up to 68 mph, and the winds took down trees by the score. In New Rochelle, 52-year-old Patrick Emenike was killed when a tree fell on his car as he was pulling out of his driveway to go to work.

Emenike, a nurse, had emigrated from Nigeria and struggled to send his four children to school, said his daughter, Erhina, 27. The family moved into the New Rochelle house in April.

“It was his pride,” she said. “Now the house that was a gift is also a curse.”

Two people were injured, but not seriously, when a branch from a falling tree went through the roof of their minivan on the Bronx River Parkway, said Westchester County police Sgt. Henry Cetina.

No one was hurt in the Tappan Zee accident. Donase, 52, of Wesley Hills, said seeing the wind tip a truck onto her “was surreal.”

“It was like slow motion,” she said. “I saw it happening.”

The tractor-trailer, which was in the outside lane, had been tipped onto two wheels, its weight supported by Donase’s car and the SUV. Its huge wheels left scratches, grease and mud on the passenger side of Donase’s car. She scrambled out the driver’s side, and when she stood on the roadway, the wind whipped her coat off.

Then the wind pushed the truck back upright, and two young men moved her 2005 Accord away from the truck, she said in an interview at her desk in White Plains, where she works for the Westchester County technology department.

Then another gust blew the truck over again, “much harder this time, all the way over, right where my car had been.”

Eventually, Donase was able to follow state police to their office in Tarrytown.

“I was a wreck in the police station,” Donase said. “I’m fine now.” Donase, who has commuted over the bridge for more than 20 years, said she never thought about skipping work and heading back home.

“I could not go back over that bridge again right away,” she said.

The tree that blocked the Metro-North tracks slowed service for hours on the New Haven and Harlem lines. One delayed commuter was Joe Farrugio, who has been living with his in-laws in Pelham after strong winds knocked out power to his home in Katonah last weekend.

“I guess I’ll just wait – it’s the only thing we can really do,” he said. But Laura Gross, also waiting at the Pelham station, was not taking things in stride.

“I don’t understand how a metro area that relies so much on these trains isn’t better prepared for weather emergencies,” she said. “The rain comes, the wind comes, the snow comes, and everything stops.”

Other fallen trees blocked roadways and tore down power lines, and the heavy rain flooded several roads.

Three sections of the Saw Mill Parkway in Westchester were closed: two by floods and one by live wires.

In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, up to 160,000 people were without power for at least some time.

Airport delays were common and ranged up to an hour and 39 minutes.

The winds decreased by Wednesday night and were expected to die down even further overnight and Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

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