Enfield
In many communities, heavy winds preceded lightning and showers, resulting in damage throughout northern Windsor County, meteorologist Jessica Neiles of the National Weather Service said. Reports of downed trees began around 5:20 p.m., she said, before the storm entered New Hampshire.
The resulting damage left about 26,000 Green Mountain Power customers in the dark, company spokesperson Dorothy Schnure said. Randolph and Royalton saw a particularly high amount of damage, she said, with many utility poles and trees knocked down.
“We planned for the storm and yet it packed a huge wallop region-wide,” Neiles said on Sunday.
In the Granite State, residents from the White Mountains down to the Seacoast felt the brunt of the storm, said Martin Murray, a spokesperson for Eversource, which provides power to much of the state. Both the central and southern portions of New Hampshire were hit hardest, he said, and an initial 61,000 customers lost power.
“It was quite amazing. It came on very quickly,” Murray said. “It was very strong and resulted in an amazing amount of damage.”
Both companies each deployed about 500 people to clean up debris and repair power lines.
As of late Sunday night, about 2,600 GMP customers were still without power — 2,160 of those residents were in the Upper Valley. Bethel, Randolph, Royalton, Sharon, Strafford, Thetford and Tunbridge each still had hundreds left in the dark Sunday night.
Eversource saw about 525 customers without power late Sunday night, about half of which were in the Upper Valley. New London was the only town left Sunday night with more than 100 customer outages.
Mascoma Lake was also battered by the storm, which downed trees, threw patio furniture around and wrecked power lines. A section of Route 4A was closed Sunday morning, deterring drivers that use the road to make 11 a.m. mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette.
As crews set about picking up and repairing downed lines, Enfield resident Don Roberts was checking in on his lake house. Although the house had no power, he said nothing landed on the roof or damaged his yard.
“A small microburst came through, from my point of view,” he said. “It must have blown hard over here.”
David Gabrielli spent Sunday morning cleaning up from the storm, which took down a willow tree and the tops of two pine trees nearby. He was in Concord for a birthday party when the storm hit, but came back around 8:30 p.m. to find the power out.
“Our patio furniture was flipped over and out in our driveway,” said Gabrielli, who lives near Enfield Center.
Power was restored about 1 a.m. on Sunday, he said, and the storm left his chicken pen intact. His neighbors’ house and property saw significant tree damage.
Liberty Utilities spokesperson John Shore said crews were seeing similar scenes throughout Enfield on Sunday. The company provides power to the Mascoma Valley along with Plainfield, Hanover, Cornish and the southern parts of the state.
“There was multiple wires down, which obviously damaged the system, not only the wires but other equipment on the poles as well,” he said.
Shore said crews were working to restore power to about 180 households in Enfield, but would often uncover more problems when one was fixed. Shore said he expected most of the work to be completed by later Sunday evening.
Murray said downed lines from Vermont also impacted Lyme, where about 953 Eversource and New Hampshire Electric Co-op households remained in the dark. Heavy storm damage in New London also made the recovery there a slow process.
Murray said crews were preparing to work through the night Sunday into today to bring power back, and have large workforces on the job.
“But it will take until midnight to basically get 99 percent of our customers back online,” he said.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.