Utility crews say they're prepared to handle outages as howling winds hurl into the Hudson Valley through Friday morning.

"Right now, all of our line crews are ready to go, our tree crews also are standing by, our customer support operations are ready to answer calls, site safety is on board," says Sophia Salis, of Orange & Rockland.

The biggest concerns are saturated soil and strong wind gusts. Ulster County suffered the brunt of early February's ice storm, with power outages mounting in the thousands.

Central Hudson says its crews are on high alert.

"Some trees that may not have fallen may have been weakened from all of that weight from that ice, so we are keeping an especially close eye on those areas that got hit hard from the ice storm and we'll have crews ready to respond if problems do occur there," says Joe Jenkins, of Central Hudson.

Con Edison tells News 12 it's monitoring the weather, but its focus is on helping Orange & Rockland due to the greater impact that area of the Hudson Valley is expected to get.