longisland

<br>	Commuters who take the Long Island Rail Road are hoping a federal program that helps them save money on fares isn't terminated.

<br>	The Federal Mass Transit Tax Benefit saves many commuters hundreds of dollars per year. The program allows people whose employers are enrolled to pay for their monthly commutes using as much as $242 in pre-tax dollars.

<br>	Sen. Charles Schumer says that over the past year, 700,000 commuters saved more than $330 million through the benefit. But it's set to expire on Dec. 31, and if it doesn't get extended before then, the program could be cut in half by Congress.

<br>	Schumer was in Mineola today to detail a plan for legislation that would extend the benefit. The senator adds that he would like to encourage Congress to make the tax benefit permanent or have it expire every two years, instead of every year.

Commuters who take the Long Island Rail Road are hoping a federal program that helps them save money on fares isn't terminated.    The Federal Mass Transit Tax Benefit saves many commuters hundreds of

Long Island

LI | Weather

LIFORECAST

More than 3 million Americans suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome. That's according to a Friday report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It found that 1.3% of adults had chronic fatigue syndrome between 2021 and 2022. The new findings place a sharp focus on the disease as it determined that far more people suffer from chronic fatigue than previously estimated. Researchers noted that these numbers may represent an undercount due to the impending storm this afternoon. The Oceanside Fire Department has announced Santa's annual visit has been postponed. The new date will be next Sunday, December 17th, starting at 4 p.m. They are telling residents to check out their social media on that day of the event for more updates. All right time. Now for another look at your hyper local forecast as we continue our storm watch coverage this morning and Alex, these uh graphics have been running all morning very concerning a lot of red on there. And the problem is how long that red, that heavy rain stays in some neighborhoods. So we're going to have to really keep an eye on things late this afternoon. But this morning is not bad. So get out, enjoy all the way through noon time. The later part of the afternoon is when those two to maybe up to four inch rainfall to push through. We have gusts of wind 40 to 60 MPH after sunset, especially. And until after midnight, street flooding expected some power outages expected. So, especially if you're in a neighborhood that's really prone to power outages. You got to make sure that you have your backup in hand and yeah, the wind isn't really too bad this morning. We even have some peaks of sun early this morning. So it is a great opportunity to just sort of do the check around the yard and make sure you don't have things that are going to fly around this afternoon and to get your errands done because people have things to do on a Sunday. So we're good until noon time. But then things pick up two o'clock or so, it's still really not a wash necessarily at this point, but you will need the umbrella then three and four o'clock. That's when some of this heavy rain sets in. We could hear some rumbles of thunder with this too. Temperatures are really climbing. We're close to six degrees as the sun sets. This is way above average for temperatures and six o'clock, it is still raining. 78 o'clock, we still have rain. So we have a long stretch of several hours of rain and then the wind kicks in too. Look at 10 o'clock, your wind gusts are at 40 MPH across parts of the island. We'll have some gusts up to 50 as we close off the evening. It's going to be kind of hard to fall asleep to this three in the morning. Some of the wind pushing through the Hamptons in the east end and then it clears out for Monday morning. There will be some showers for the morning commute. It'll still be breezy, but it won't be a flood risk at that point. Although there could still be some flooding from whatever residual happens today through noon. Look, we do have some rain on the map but nothing flooding wise until the late afternoon, we'll pick up about an inch or so by four o'clock and here's the concern. The models have been painting this, all of them consistently. There's an area either somewhere in Nassau, Western Suffolk, maybe central Suffolk where a line of storms set up and bring maybe 2 to 5 inches of rain. It could possibly be toward Connecticut or it could be here on the island. So we're keeping an eye on things through the evening time where both storms set up. We have some problems the rest of the work week, totally dry. But Breezy through Wednesday.

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Congressional cuts could derail commuter tax benefit for LIRR riders