Late Snowfall

Thousands of electric customers throughout Northern Vermont lost power due to a spring snow storm.

Wet snow caused my problems on Wednesday as the heavy wet nature of the snow caused for trees and power lines to fall down throughout the Northeast Kingdom. Rob Duranleau from Lyndonville Electric said, "To be quite honest all the power lines are getting downed by trees and the trees are laying on them shorting out the circuit. So I mean whenever there's an outage you have to go fix it when they come in and prioritize the big lines from the small lines."

Some are even without landline service due to trees taking out phone lines. Sabina Haskell, a FairPoint Corporate Communications said, "We do have a few places where the trees have brought down lines and there are some outages there and we've got the crews out working to get the lines back up."

This particular storm may not be as severe as one this area typically sees. However because it is so late in the season the warmer temperatures are making for a slushy mess.  Duranleau also said, "The snow is a lot heavier so right now I mean you get the damage from the trees and the snow brings them down and then you get the aftermath when the snow falls off the trees and damage again and break it."

Snow Totals from Around Northern Vermont

Fortunately telephone companies prepared themselves for the storm, allowing most residents without power to at least have phone service. Haskell says, "We are defiantly prepared for the storm our crews were standing by the great thing about landlines is that we have a double back up so we have a backup generator and backup batteries so if the power companies lose electricity our landlines keep going.

And even with electric crews working all through the night to restore power, some might lose it again. Duranleau, "It's quite possible that when the snow melts the branches will release from their down position and will knock some of the lines together and the power will come on again we'll be back out."

The two hardest hit were areas surrounding St. Albans and St. Johnsbury.