Utility crews raced Saturday to restore power to tens of thousands of customers across New England after a powerful storm dumped 2 feet of snow in some places.
More than 160,000 customers in New England were in the dark as of the afternoon as heavy snow brought tree limbs onto power lines, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages across the country. Restoration efforts were complicated by snow still falling in some places, making travel dangerous.
Doug Foley, Eversource president of electric operations in New Hampshire, said snow-covered roads were making it tough for workers to reach communities in order to assess damage and make repairs.
"We are still taking on system damage in parts of the state where heavy, wet snow continues to fall, and hundreds of additional crews are coming to New Hampshire to support our restoration effort,'' Foley said in an emailed statement.
As of Saturday night, Eversource had restored power to nearly 91,000 customers in New Hampshire since the beginning of the storm, but another 11,000+ remained without power, according to the utility. The New Hampshire Electric Co-op is reporting another 3,347.
Green Mountain Power, which serves customers in Vermont, was reporting 24,485 outages Saturday night. Green Mountain Power said more outages were possible there with temperatures not expected to warm up enough in the next couple of days to melt the snow.
"Clearing downed trees to get to outage locations has been slow and difficult,'' Mike Burke, the utility company's vice president of field operations, said in a statement.
According to the company, remote, severely damaged areas may take a few days to see their power restored.
More than 2 feet of snow was recorded in parts of Vermont, and many communities across the region saw more than a foot, according to the National Weather Service.
As of 11:59 p.m., only 77 customers were without power in Massachusetts, according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. The majority of the outages initially were in western Mass., though the Worcester area and some parts of Greater Boston and the Cape also experienced issues.
In Connecticut, Eversource was reporting zero outages.
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