Utility workers restore power to over 100,000 residents after snowstorm

Winter is on its way to the Granite State with a powerful snowstorm that knocked out power for more than 100,000 residents Friday and through the weekend. Utility workers from several companies labored across the state and around the clock to quickly restore power. According to the Department of Safety, only 8,000 customers were without power by Sunday.

As of Monday, Eversource had fewer than five Laconia customers without power.

"Over the course of this storm, our crews restored power to approximately 10,183 customers in our communities served by our Tilton Area Work Center, which include Laconia, Gilford, Belmont, Tilton, Sanbornton, and New Hampton among others," Eversource Media Relations Manager William Hinkle wrote in an emailed statement.

"We had more than 850 line, tree and service crews in New Hampshire as part of this restoration effort, who worked tirelessly to restore power to approximately 121,500 Eversource customers statewide since the storm began," Hinkle wrote. "The primary cause of outages during this storm was [that] tree limbs were weighed down by heavy, wet snow that also froze overnight Friday into Saturday and trees that came down causing damage to the electric system."

Thirty-five New Hampshire Electric Cooperative customers were still without power Monday in Alton, less than 1% of the utility's customer base in that location.

“We're down to just small scattered outages now. The big challenge from this storm is that it caused damage in more than 200 locations on our distributions system,” said NHEC Communications Manager Seth Wheeler. “Many of the Alton outages are located on the islands of Winnipesaukee. They are going to be waiting. The ice conditions need to be safe to get out there to restore power.”

Wheeler shared that NHEC had a peak of 16,582 members without power at around 4 a.m. Saturday.

“It looked like the farther north you went in the Lakes Region, the worse the outages were,” Wheeler said. “It was more the eastern Lakes Region. We had some problems there.”

Wheeler added that the co-op's most affected areas were located in Sullivan County in the Connecticut River Valley, citing elevation as a factor for increased damage.

“The higher you were, just an extra 100 feet of elevation, the more the snow seemed to stick and the heavier it was,” Wheeler explained. “Heavy, wet snow — besides hurricanes and ice storms, that's probably the most damaging event we get here.”

Wheeler went on to categorize New Hampshire as one of if not the most forested state in the country.

“When enough snow weighs down on branches and trees, they start coming down and taking out power lines,” he said.