Dan and Whit's employee Mike Dubuque, of Lyme, N.H., waits for the power to come back on at the Norwich, Vt., store on Nov. 27, 2018. Customers continued to shop at the store moving down aisles illuminated with little lights placed among groceries. The power was out for about 35 minutes. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.
Dan and Whit's employee Mike Dubuque, of Lyme, N.H., waits for the power to come back on at the Norwich, Vt., store on Nov. 27, 2018. Customers continued to shop at the store moving down aisles illuminated with little lights placed among groceries. The power was out for about 35 minutes. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Credit: Valley News — Jennifer Hauck

Fairlee — Heavy, wet snow knocked down tree limbs and power lines throughout the Upper Valley on Tuesday and also sent cars skidding along untreated roads.

The weather also appeared to play a role in causing rocks from a ledge to fall onto Interstate 91 in Fairlee. Vermont State Police responded to a single-car crash around 6:55 a.m. and found a driver from Derby, Vt., had crashed into rocks in the southbound travel lane.

State police said it was snowing at the time and several pieces fell from the ledge on the east side of the highway. The driver, Richard Ludwig, “was unable to avoid the ledge … and struck a large piece with the front right tire” of his pickup truck, officials said. The truck sustained “moderate damage,” and the travel lane was shut down for about three hours as crews cleaned up the site, police said.

In Vermont, Green Mountain Power crews “faced dangerous driving and working conditions due to slippery roads and falling trees,” the utility company said of the power outages, which started from the storm on Monday night.

“Our crews are making progress, working to make repairs as quickly and safely as possible. This is a big event and it is far from over as the storm continues to cause new outages,” GMP President and CCO Mary Powell said in a statement on Tuesday evening. “We’ve restored power to 42,000 of the 76,000 customers who lost it due to the storm, but getting to every last outage will take time.”

More than 600 workers were deployed to restore power, including teams from Massachusetts and Canada. GMP said the storm initially “slammed into” southern Vermont in the Route 9 corridor, then moved north and caused “extensive damage” in the Royalton, Rutland and Montpelier areas.

As of 9 p.m. on Tuesday, more than 26,000 GMP customers across 112 Vermont communities were without power. On Tuesday evening, Sharon Academy, a GMP customer, told parents in a robocall that school would be canceled today after the utility could not offer assurances that power would be restored in time for classes.

Some outages in the “hardest-hit areas” could last until Friday, GMP said.

Washington Electric Co-op also reported more than 4,500 customers without power on Tuesday evening, including about 1,000 in Chelsea, Corinth, Tunbridge and Vershire.

Eversource, which serves much of New Hampshire, reported more than 8,200 customers still affected as of 9 p.m. on Tuesday.

More than 100 Granite State towns reported at least some outages. Several towns in the Lake Sunapee region appeared particularly hard-hit; virtually all customers in Grantham were without power at one point, according to reports.

The New Hampshire Electric Cooperative also reported outages in towns including Orange, Grafton, Unity and Newport.