Power slowly returns to residents left in dark after Friday’s snowstorm
The lights are back on in thousands of homes after Friday’s snowstorm knocked out power to thousands of power customers across the state.
As many as 107,600 households were without power on Friday evening. As of 6 p.m. Saturday, just over 20,000 power customers were still without power according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.
Officials said the unexpectedly high snow fall totals led to delays in getting power customers back on line.
“Going by the forecast, it’s certainly more snow than we anticipated,’’ MEMA spokesman Peter Judge told Boston.com.
Eversource tweeted about the outages Saturday morning, saying it expects to “substantially complete’’ power restoration to customers by midnight, and released a list of estimated restoration times, for each community.
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On Saturday afternoon, MEMA tweeted a list of open warming centers for residents without electricity.
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National Grid customers are experiencing a large percentage of outages. A company spokesperson told Boston.com that the most recent estimate was roughly 70,000 customers in New England experiencing outages, primarily across Massachusetts.
More snow has fallen than originally predicted, which has hampered restoration efforts, Judge said.
“The strong winds have been an imposition to get bucket trucks in the air,’’ Judge said. “Traveling around to get vehicles to problem locations has also been slow and is surely affecting restoration time.’’
On Saturday morning, Eversource, formerly called NSTAR, brought in workers from western Massachusetts, including line workers and support staff, to aid eastern Massachusetts crews in their restoration efforts.
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The snow from Friday’s storm was wet and pasty, unlike the dry powder that fell during last year’s month of snowstorms. The heavier, wet snow is far more likely to cause power outages since it can coat and pull down power lines and trees. Severalpolicedepartments across the state reported downed trees and power lines as the storm intensified through the morning and into the afternoon.
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