Power gradually returns for many following weekend storm

More than 170,000 electrical customers across New England were without power Sunday night, after the region’s south was battered by heavy rains, and northern areas were buried by as much as 2 feet of snow. The bulk of outages were in southern Maine, while parts of New Hampshire were also hard hit.

The storm was a late-season boon for ski resorts across the region. At Sunday River in Maine, the resort posted images of skiers and snowboarders hitting the slopes: “Chowin’ down on those storm leftovers,” the resort wrote on social media.

But it also triggered flood warnings Sunday along some inland rivers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where the ground was already saturated going into the weekend. The Taunton River was particularly in danger of overflowing.

And in Western Massachusetts, heavy rains caused a sewer overflow in Greenfield Saturday night, causing untreated sewage to flow into stretches of the Green, Deerfield, and Connecticut rivers. Local officials are warning people to stay away from those areas until Monday night due to the threat of contamination.

Power was restored for thousands of customers by late evening, while many others continued to wait. PowerOutage.us reported 107,711 outages in Maine, and 27,828 more in New Hampshire as of about 11 p.m. About 140 Massachusetts customers were without power, along with about 40 in Connecticut. A handful of outages were reported in Rhode Island and Vermont.

In Maine, the hardest-hit area was Cumberland County, home to Portland, where about 24,000 customers were without power late Sunday night, according to utility Central Maine Power. “We have more than 350 line crews on the job now with more arriving [Monday], working 24/7 until power is restored to all of our customers,” the company said in a statement on its website Sunday afternoon.

In Portland, the evening low was expected to be 22 degrees, according to forecasters. The city opened a temporary warming center in the city’s East End Community School on North Street at 5 p.m., the city said in an alert sent out to residents Sunday afternoon.

The Portland shelter was expected to remain operational until 7 a.m. Monday, the alert said.

“The city would like to remind residents to please check on any neighbors who may be elderly or physically challenged to ensure they are safe and warm, if they do not have power,” the city said in the alert.

The Cumberland County Emergency Management Agency said in a social media posting Sunday morning that outages had affected about half of the county.

The Maine Emergency Management Agency reported about a dozen warming centers were opened in the wake of the storm, including in Saco, Scarborough, Brunswick, and Biddeford.

Jerry Combs, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Gray, Maine, said Cumberland county was hit with a mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain Saturday, along with wind gusts with speeds of up to 35 miles per hour that night, after trees and branches were coated with ice and snow.

“As the winds picked up last night when the sun went down, that’s when the power outages really started ramping up,” Combs said in an interview. Those conditions are “certainly enough to take down some trees and tree branches,” he said.

In New Hampshire, the state’s emergency operations center was activated Sunday to support communities, officials said in a statement.

Robert Buxton, the director of New Hampshire Department of Safety’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in the statement: “Downed power lines and debris can pose a danger. If you do come across downed power lines, stay away and call 911.”

In Massachusetts, the storm caused an overflow of nearly 21,000 gallons of untreated sewage from a sanitary sewer Saturday evening in Greenfield, according to the city.

The discharge, which lasted from around 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., affected the Green and Deerfield rivers in Greenfield, as well as the Connecticut River in Deerfield, Montague, and Sunderland, according to the city, which announced the overflow in an alert posted to its website.

“Avoid contact with these water bodies due to increased health risks from bacteria and other pollutants,” according to the city.

People are advised to stay away from those areas until Monday at 9:30 p.m., according to Matthew Conway, a city spokesperson.

The overflow did not affect the drinking water, according to the city. The discharge came from a regulator chamber outfall, which acts as a safety mechanism designed to protect the city’s waste-water treatment plant, according to Conway.

The system is designed to prevent the plant’s water treatment process from being destroyed by flooding, and the safety mechanism diverts excess water into the Green River.