Thanksgiving storm arrived as predicted, leaving thousands without power in its wake – VTDigger

Vermont utility companies have been hard at work restoring power to thousands of customers after a holiday snow storm brought heavy, wet snow that knocked out power lines Thursday. 

The Thanksgiving storm effects were “fairly on track” with predictions as the Champlain Valley experienced mostly rain while southern and central Vermont and higher elevations reported more snowfall, said Jessica Storm, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Burlington office. 

The holiday storm gifted Killington Mountain skiers 21 inches of fresh snow in time for this weekend’s World Cup, according to the Killington Mountain Resort’s latest conditions report. 

As of 2:00 p.m. Friday, there were still 1,266 customers without power around the state, including over 800 Green Mountain Power customers and more than 400 Washington Electric Cooperative customers. Central Vermont reported the most remaining outages, with over 400 customers in Orange County, over 300 customers in Rutland County, and over 200 customers in Windsor County without power as of Friday afternoon.

Kristin Kelly, director of communications for Green Mountain Power, said over 16,000 customers lost power because of the storm, but line workers had restored power to about 15,000 customers and expected to fix power outages for the rest of their affected customers by the end of Friday. 

“Our field operations team tracks multiple forecasts for days in advance of something like this, so that we can be prepared to respond as quickly and as safely as possible for customers,” said Kelly.

The number of affected Washington Electric Cooperative (WEC) customers peaked at nearly 2,000 who experienced power outages due to the snow storm and additional outage reports are expected, said Louis Porter, general manager of WEC. 

“What happens in a storm like this with wet snow is frequently the tree branches spring back as the snow falls off them, and they slap into the lines if they’re leaning over enough, and that can cause a secondary outage,” said Porter. 

All of the WEC crews along with two crews from Vermont Electric Cooperative and one contract crew were deployed Friday to help restore power to customers in Orange, Washington and Caledonia counties. Porter said he hoped most power outages would be fixed by the end of Friday, but there could be a few power outage incidents that take longer to remedy. 

“It can be hard to predict, particularly as you get down into the last few,” said Porter. “There’ll probably be a handful of outage events or breaks in the line that go into the night or even into tomorrow morning, ones that are particularly isolated and difficult to reach, or where there’s particular damage.”

Porter said the mutual aid agreement between WEC and other New England utility companies to share labor during destructive weather events is “essential” for rural public utilities. He commended the work of the crews helping to restore power to the state.

“These folks that do this work are absolutely incredible people,” said Porter. “They push themselves as hard as they can while remaining safe to restore power to their neighbors and the people that they serve.”