More than 100,000 lose power in April Nor’easter

By PAULA TRACY

CONCORD – About 100,000 New Hampshire electric customers were out of power at 8 a.m. and the list was climbing as heavy snow was falling across most of New Hampshire, Thursday during the start of a Nor’easter.

At 7:45 a.m., Eversource was reporting 66,667 or about 12 percent of its customers were without power and that was up from 61,152 at 7:30 a.m.

New Hampshire Electric Cooperative was reporting 40 percent of its customers without power at the same hour or 34,046 with a few of the particularly hard hit areas including Sandown, Lempster, Deerfield, Chester, New Durham and Alton.

Unitil reported about 11 percent of its New Hampshire customers or 8,549 without power, mostly in the Concord and Exeter area.

As the wind began to pick up, and was expected to be an added factor to the heavy snow on branches and limbs particularly on the Western side of the state Eversource’s hard hit communities included Barnstead – which had been without power for a lengthy period of time in the last storm – Andover, Chatham, Chichester, Eaton, Gilmanton, Northwood, Pittsfield, Sandwich and Webster.