Henri slams into state with heavy rain, winds
Flooding still a concern; 90% of those without power to see it restored by Monday
Tropical Storm Henri, downgraded from a hurricane earlier Sunday, spread across Connecticut throughout the day, bringing soaking rain, flash flooding, high wind gusts and scattered power outages to the region.
While far less damaging than initially feared, the massive weather system dumped heavy and sustained rainfall across the state, sparking flash flood warnings and evacuations. The rain is expected to continue through Monday, and flooding remains a threat.
Despite concerns of widespread power outages, Eversource reported Sunday evening that only about 28,000 Connecticut customers were in the dark. Craig Hallstrom, the company’s chief of regional operations, projected the vast majority will be back online Monday or Tuesday, with the final stragglers no later than Wednesday.
“The good news is that if we have 28,000 folks still without power, then 90 percent will be restored by this time tomorrow,” Gov. Ned Lamont said at a late afternoon press briefing.
The National Weather Service is still
predicting rain — often heavy — through Monday evening, which means the danger of flooding isn’t over. The rain will be followed by another round of hot weather midweek.
“Don’t get complacent,” Lamont advised. The path of the storm meant less wind, but heavy rain and flooding remains “the biggest risk we have right now,” he said. “If you have to get to work and you see those puddles of water, be careful — you don’t know if it’s 1 inch or a foot.”
Flooding on I-91 in Hartford led to several accidents Sunday, said state Trooper Matthew Cashman. The accidents were cleared, “but as troopers were out there investigating crashes, more and more crashes started happening because of the flooding,” Cashman said. At 3 p.m., state police closed the northbound side of the highway between Exits 25 and 26; it has since reopened.
Four nursing homes on the shoreline — in Old Saybrook, Mystic, Guilford and West Haven — were evacuated, according to Lamont’s chief of staff, Paul Mounds. About 250 residents were relocated to other nursing homes, he said.
The state is also cautioning against swimming, fishing or other using paddlecraft for the next three days in water bodies near drainage pipes, particularly in urban areas such as Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport.
“Given the significant rainfall that occurred (and is still expected) due to Tropical Storm Henri, many areas across the state have experienced discharges of untreated sewage,” the state Department of Public Health and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said.
Landfall in Rhode Island
Henri had been on track to become the first hurricane to make landfall in New England in 36 years. But the system had been reclassified as a tropical storm by the time it reached Rhode Island and weakened further as it trundled across Connecticut. The center of the storm reached land around 12:15 p.m. near Westerly, R.I., the National Weather Service reported.
“It was expected to be downgraded to a tropical storm so that’s not surprising,” Gary Lessor, chief meteorologist at Western Connecticut State University, said Sunday morning. “What was surprising is the storm intensity wasn’t quite to the level expected.”
While the rain continued to fall, the potential for winds strong enough to lead to historic power outages did not materialize. The state had banned empty tractor trailers, tandem tractor trailers and motorcycles on I-95 starting Sunday morning, but lifted the ban at 5 p.m. Sunday.
Stonington, which had braced for hurricane-force damage, closed its emergency shelter by midafternoon, and East Haven lifted its mandatory evacuation order for scores of homes by 4 p.m.
“We want to thank everyone for their patience and cooperation during this weather event. Thankfully it was less severe than originally predicted,” East Haven police Tweeted at 4 p.m.
The change in the storm’s track is good news for central Connecticut, where a direct hit could have been “catastrophic,” Lessor said. But it doesn’t mean the state won’t face significant effects from Henri.
“You’re still going to have power outages,” he said. “There’s still enough dead trees in the state, and they’re at a full canopy so when you get wind gusts over 40 mph, you’ve got to expect there’s going to be outages, just not of the magnitude that was expected.”
The heaviest rain and wind was reported out of Stonington and New London at midday Sunday, but the area avoided a surge of water from Long Island Sound.
Heavy rain, evacuations
For most of Connecticut, the shift in the storm’s path meant heavy rain and flooding, rather than high winds or storm surges, posed the greatest risk.
“It looks like we’re going to be on the heavier rain side of the storm rather than the wind, but we still anticipate quiet a few outages,” said Frank Poirot, a spokesman for Eversource Energy, the state’s largest utility. “The ground is already saturated from storm Fred. A couple more inches of rain on top of that is just going to further undermine the root systems of trees and eventually lead to power outages.”
Lamont, who ordered 200 members of the Connecticut National Guard to prepare teams and specialized equipment to help in an emergency, said his main concern is now rain. “We’re not going to see hurricane force winds,” Lamont said Sunday morning. But, he added, “even a 40 or 50 mph gust can uproot a tree … given how soft the soil is.”
Rain associated with the long-duration storm system could create bigger problems, Lessor said. “Keep in mind we’re going to get hit today and there will be more rain tonight and [showers] tomorrow,” he said. “So while the wind concern is today, rain effects continue through Monday.”
Hartford experienced tremendous flooding on Thursday when the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred dumped 5 inches of rain in a matter of hours and Mayor Luke Bronin said the city was preparing for potentially even more severe impacts from Henri.
The city’s public works crews already had been working since Thursday’s storm to clear drains and catch basins to try to prevent flooding.
In Stonington, nestled in Connecticut’s southeast corner, First Selectman Danielle Chesebrough said that the town had been hit with wind and rain Sunday morning, and a few trees had already come down, including one that crashed into a house, though no one was injured.
Across Saturday evening and Sunday morning, people trickled into an emergency shelter at Stonington High School, she said.
“We’re encouraging people to come before the storm picks up in the next hour,” Chesebrough said just before 10 a.m. from the town’s emergency operations center.
“We’ve had a lot of people coming out, for example, down to the Stonington Point, to come and see the scene, and we are very concerned about storm surges, and that’s where most people lose their lives in storms like this,” she said.
Since many of the town’s roads south of Route 1 are at risk of flooding, members of the Old Saybrook police department and volunteer fire department dropped bright pink fliers at residents’ homes on Saturday and Sunday morning urging residents to leave the area or take shelter at the local high school.
About 30 people had opted to shelter at Old Saybrook Senior High School by late Sunday morning, Fortuna said.
Multiple Eversource trucks were stationed in town, ready to be deployed as needed, he added. In the days leading up to the storm, Eversource crews had taken down a number of dead trees in preparation for the surge.
Outages lower than predicted
The power outages hit smaller towns in southeastern Connecticut the hardest.
In Canterbury, 86 percent of homes were out of power shortly before 7 p.m. Sunday, along with 67 percent of Voluntown and 52 percent of Pomfret.
During the day Sunday, crews were able to restore electricity to about 20,000 homes and businesses, Lamont said. He projected that many of the crews brought in from other states will be dispatched to Rhode Island, where outages and damage were worse.
Thousands of additional repair crews were brought to the state by Eversource to handle the possibility of mass power loss. The utility came under widespread criticism following Tropical Storm Isaias last summer. State regulators later found “inactions or deficiencies” that created a significant risk to public safety and ordered a reduction in Eversource’s return on equity by 0.9%, which amounts to about $31 million a year.
Those out-of-state utility workers, some coming from as far away as Texas, will be offered COVID-19 tests and vaccinations during their stay in Connecticut, Lamont said.
The storm was expected to churn north across the state overnight into Monday, with strong winds and heavy rain continuing throughout, before it is pushed northeast across Massachusetts and the rest of New England throughout Monday and into Tuesday, according to the hurricane center.
Officials had initially feared Henri would make landfall in Connecticut as a hurricane, which would have been the first direct hit on the state since Hurricane Gloria in 1985.
Business closures, transit shutdowns
Amtrak suspended service through Connecticut for the day, and the Westfarms and Trumbull shopping malls shut down for the day.
Bradley International Airport was open, but many airlines adjusted their flight schedules Sunday. About half of the day’s arriving and departing flights were canceled, said Alisa D. Sisic, manager of marketing for the airport. She advised passengers to contact their airline to confirm the latest flight information before coming to the airport.
Recreation areas across the state were shut down ahead of the storm, and trains, buses and ferries suspended service for the day.
Metro-north ran no New Haven Line service Sunday. CT Transit kept all of its buses off the roads for the day, but expects to resume service at 3 a.m. Monday. The Bridgeport-port Jefferson ferries and New London-orient Point ferries were all sidelined for the day, but service is expected to resume Monday morning.
The state judicial branch announced jury service would be canceled Monday.
All state campgrounds closed at 4 p.m. Saturday through at least Monday afternoon, and the Metropolitan District announced that its recreation areas around area reservoirs and lakes in West Hartford, Bloomfield, Barkhamsted and Hartland would all be closed for the storm.