Michael Clendenin, a Con Ed spokesman, said its crews were working hard to repair the damaged Long Island City network, whose feeder lines supply northwestern Queens and La Guardia Airport.

Mr. Beckman said that the city's public schools, with more than 1 million students, have been adding 25,000 students a year - most of them from immigrant families and many of them living in northwestern Queens.

I-678 runs from the John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens north to the Bruckner Interchange; its original planned south end was at I-278 in northwestern Queens.

Leaving Woodside in northwestern Queens, where old-timers of Irish and Italian descent live with the borough's newcomers, the city bus picks up the beachbound in the working-class, immigrant neighborhoods of Queens.

For according to Geoff Cornish, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, the heaviest snow fell in a 15-mile-wide band that passed directly over Midtown Manhattan, the southeastern Bronx and northwestern Queens.

Mr. Manton, the Democrat who has represented northwestern Queens for 14 years, handpicked Mr. Crowley as his successor.

The Indian Point 3 shutdown comes at a time of anxiety over power shortages in northwestern Queens, where thousands of households and businesses continued to have little or no power.

Mr. Clendenin said three of four large electrical feeder lines were down in Con Ed's Long Island City network, which supplies northwestern Queens, and La Guardia Airport.

In Astoria, a neighborhood in northwestern Queens with a large Greek and Italian presence, Christmas is on display.

It provides crosstown service between western Brooklyn and northwestern Queens and is the only major line to not carry trains to/from Manhattan.