A downed tree on Hale Road in the Town of Norwich is the cause of an early afternoon power outage that knocked out traffic lights and left approximately 1,000 people without power as of 2 p.m. Heavy winds were blamed for the fallen tree and the outage affected NYSEG customers up and down the western side of the city, east along the Route 23 corridor and along the length of County Road 32. As of 2:45 p.m., Emergency Management Officer A Jones reported NYSEG had isolated the outage and said he believed electrical service had been returned to many residences. He added that power should be returned to all customers within the next two to three hours.