Friday, April 5 update: As of 10:30 a.m. there are almost 104,000 people out of power across the state.
New Hampshire Electric Co-Op reports 31,714, Eversource at 64,493, Unitil at 5,780 and Liberty 1,848.
Areas hardest hit by the outages appear to be in Conway, Deerfield, Effingham, Madbury, Lyme, Freedom and Milton for Eversource.
For Unitil the areas of greatest impact include Atkinson, Hampton Falls, Kingston and Kensington.
Snowblowing in Center Harbor. Photo by Paula Tracy
By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
April 4 – Saying this will require a “multi-day response” to restore power to some 170,000 customers without power, utility crews were calling for help from afar to help them fix the power lines now down across the state from storm damage, while some were digging out from more than a foot of snow, which continued to fall at 4 p.m.
Vanessa Palange, community outreach coordinator of the state Office of Emergency Management said if people have not yet lost power, they still may and now is a time to prepare for such a power loss.
She urged those without generators to move to the second floor of their home which may be warmer, as heat rises and to be sure not to operate a generator within 20 feet of a home.
She said some communities have opened warming centers, including New Durham, Auburn, and Barnstead, and that if people need help to call 2-1-1 or if it is an emergency, 9-1-1.
More than 110,000 Eversource electric customers were out of power at 3:30 said spokesman William Hinkle.
Unitil’s Alec O’Meara said 18,460 of their customers were without power as of noon Thursday and 35,810 customers of New Hampshire Electric Cooperative were without power, roughly 43 percent of its customers as of 4 p.m. The storm was expected to continue into the evening with winds gusting and the temperature near freezing.
At noon Thursday, the state’s Emergency Operations went from “enhanced monitoring,” the lowest activation level, to the next stage “partial activation” engaging resources from all aspects of transportation, energy, health, housing, and other emergency response partners, said Palange.
Gov. Chris Sununu said at about 11 a.m. “As the storm hits New Hampshire we continue to monitor power outages across the state and flooding along the seacoast,” he said.
The governor urged citizens to be sure to give room to plows and be alert to the possibility children may be playing in the snow.
Finally, he thanked those “plow truck drivers working to clear the roads and the line crews working to get the lights back on!”
Outages were continuing to mount during the morning and that could be expected into the coming hours, said meteorologist Stephen Baron at the National Weather Service in Gray Maine, which forecasts for the region of New Hampshire and Maine.
He said at 10 a.m. that the temperatures across New Hampshire were steady at freezing with winds 30 to 35 miles per hour throughout. He said we are about halfway through the storm.
Baron said he was continuing to monitor wind and the potential for downed limbs causing power outages and accidents.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if this continues,” he said of power outages.
O’Meara at Unitil said strong winds were challenging work conditions and “hampered” restoration efforts.
In just three hours New Hampshire Electric Cooperative went from 34,046 outages to 43,377 at 11:30.
In the early hours, it was reporting 40 percent of its customers were without power with particularly hard-hit areas including Sandown, Lempster, Deerfield, Chester, New Durham, and Alton. By 11:30 the impacts were being felt in the Mount Washington Valley, Moultonborough, and Meredith.
A link to NHEC’s outage map is here https://ebill.nhec.com/maps/external/OutageWebMap/#outage-map.
The Seacoast was again battered by the roiling sea though it was seen as not as bad as the two previous storms.
Hampton Police said they were dealing with road closures on Brown Avenue and Cusack Road.
The next high tide is expected at 8:32 p.m.
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.
Waterville Valley ski area was closed Thursday due to what they anticipated would be a prolonged power outage.
More than 800 Eversource line, tree, and service crews were working to make repairs to restore power to customers.
Hinkle said the early spring Nor’easter caused significant destruction to trees across New Hampshire which were already weakened by last week’s ice and wind storms.
Once restoration is complete in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Eversource said its crews there will come through tomorrow to support what will be “a multi-day restoration effort.”
Just when everyone gets power back is not known.
“The electric system continues to take on damage and we will have to complete damage assessment before we have a specific timeline for restoring power for all customers, but we know this will be a multi-day restoration effort with the massive destruction to trees caused by this early spring Nor’easter,” said Eversource New Hampshire President of Electric Operations Doug Foley. “Trees were already weakened by last week’s storms, and today’s heavy, wet cement-like snow is sticking to trees – further weighing down limbs and branches that are more easily coming down with the strong winds. Travel has also been a significant challenge for our crews today, with blocked and impassable roads, downed wires, and slippery conditions impeding their efforts to get where they’re needed. Hundreds of additional line crews will continue arriving tomorrow to support our restoration effort, and we will have well over 1,200 line, tree, and service crews working to support our communities and customers once they arrive. Our customers have been walloped by these early spring storms over the last week, and we thank them for their patience and understanding as our crews focus on safety while responding to community priorities, clearing damage, and making repairs.”
People were reminded to keep themselves and their pets clear of downed wires and report them immediately to 9–1–1.
In addition, Eversource reminded that customers should be cautious when doing their own storm clean up – when moving or cutting tree limbs, look for any wires that may be entangled in debris.