Strong winds cause minor damage, outages in Lakes Region

While some areas in the Granite State experienced high winds, hail and heavy rain in the late hours of Tuesday and into Wednesday, the city and surrounding towns had minor damage and power outages.

"The strong winds brought trees and tree limbs down, causing damage to the electrical system in several different communities including Laconia, Tamworth, Albany, Madison, Danbury, Canterbury and Freedom," Bill Hinkle, spokesperson for Eversource, said on Wednesday.

Hinkle said, in all, there were 166 outages from the storm, and all customers had power restored by Wednesday.

Laconia Fire Chief Tim Joubert said his department wasn't strained.

“We just had a little bit of rain, but that’s it,” Joubert. “No storm-related incidents.”

On Tuesday, the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, was forecasting inclement weather to the north, and meteorologist Hunter Tubbs said there was a chance the Lakes Region could be hit hard, as well.

Spokespeople for Eversource and New Hampshire Electric Cooperative both told The Daily Sun on Tuesday they were ready, and monitoring the forecast and mobilizing crews to areas where severe storms were threatening.

Some predictions were calling for damaging winds with gusts of more than 70 mph, and potential for tornadoes. The highest risk was expected between 8 p.m. and midnight.

The thunderstorms were coming down from Canada, and were expected to gather strength as they approached New Hampshire. Tubbs said it was a rare occasion to have the storm system gain strength at night.

Bucket trucks from Asplundh were staging the parking lot of Staples, in Tilton, on Tuesday night, in preparation.

To be safe, Hinkle said crews were ready to mobilize to any region, and there were dozens of distribution bucket trucks ready.

Hinkle said a tree did come down onto wires, causing 166 outages.

Colin Manning, spokesperson for NHEC, said most outages were in the western part of the state, and none locally. He said smoke from Canadian wildfires kept temperatures down, and likely lessened the strength of the storms.

"We were prepared and had teams ready to go," Manning said.