This Morning’s Bulletin — 5.19.20

Good Morning!

• Today will be sunny and breezy, with a high temperature near 62 degrees and an east wind around 22 miles per hour, with gusts as high as 37. It will be mostly clear overnight, with a low around 43. Wednesday will be sunny, with a high near 61 and Thursday will be mostly sunny, with a high near 61.

• Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone reported hopeful numbers in his daily Covid-19 briefing Monday, with some of the lowest numbers he’s reported since the crisis began. Just 107 people in Suffolk had tested positive for the disease on Sunday, with hospitalizations down eight to 505 and ICU beds down seven to 169. He also reported six new deaths in the past 24 hours, the first time deaths have been in the single digits in nearly two months.

• Mr. Bellone reported Monday the county is meeting six of the seven metrics necessary to begin reopening its economy. Currently, the Long Island region is just five days in to a required 14-day decline in Covid-19 hospital deaths, putting the earliest possible reopening date at May 27. The county is also still in the process of bringing contact tracers trained by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University on board, but Mr. Bellone said “adding employees [to do contact tracing] is not going to be a significant issue” in reopening the economy. The New York State reopening dashboard says the Long Island region, which includes Nassau County is “expected” to meet the contact tracer metric, but also says just five out of seven of the metrics have been met.

• New York State has instituted a lookup tool for business owners to find out in what phase their business is allowed to reopen.

• East Hampton Town is asking New York State to delay the opening of resort hotels and motels until later in the state’s reopening process, over community “fears that flow of summer hotel visitors will spread coronavirus,” according to a statement the town issued Monday. Hotels and other places  of accommodation are currently deemed one of the essential businesses that have been allowed to operate throughout the pandemic.

• Southampton Town will implement a phased reopening and staffing of beaches beginning Saturday, May 23.  Three beaches – Ponquogue Beach in Hampton Bays, Sagg Main in Sagaponack and Long Beach in Sag Harbor, will operate on weekends. They will be staffed with lifeguards and beach attendants.  Restrooms will be open and concessions will operate as takeout only. The town hopes to open several other beaches later in June and to operate seven days a week in July.

The high tides on the East End for the next two days are as follows:

May 19
Plum Gut Harbor: 8:36 a.m., 8:54 p.m.
Montauk Harbor: 7:44 a.m., 8:02 p.m.
Greenport: 9:13 a.m., 9:31 p.m.
Mattituck Inlet: 10:07 a.m., 10:21 p.m.
Sag Harbor: 9:08 a.m., 9:26 p.m.
New Suffolk: 10:35 a.m., 10:53 p.m.
South Jamesport: 10:42 a.m., 11 p.m.
Shinn. Bay Entrance: 7:36 a.m., 8:01 p.m.
Shinn. Inlet: 5:45 a.m., 6:10 p.m.

May 20
Plum Gut Harbor: 9:17 a.m., 9:32 p.m.
Montauk Harbor: 8:25 a.m., 8:40 p.m.
Greenport: 9:54 a.m., 10:09 p.m.
Mattituck Inlet: 10:50 a.m., 11 p.m.
Sag Harbor: 9:49 a.m., 10:04 p.m.
New Suffolk: 11:16 a.m., 11:31 p.m.
South Jamesport: 11:23 a.m., 11:38 p.m.
Shinn. Bay Entrance: 8:20 a.m., 8:39 p.m.
Shinn. Inlet: 6:29 a.m., 6:48 p.m.

And that’s the way things look at dawn’s light here today.