BOSTON — Thousands of Bay Staters were still in the dark on Christmas Eve, as utility companies raced to restore power while workers battled frigid and windy conditions across the region.
Meanwhile on Saturday, heavy ocean effect snow was dumping several inches of the white stuff on Martha’s Vineyard, which was under a winter storm warning through Christmas Day.
More than 80,000 households across Massachusetts were without power as of Friday night, as wicked strong winds battered the region, knocking down trees and power lines. The number of outages was cut down to 10,950 as of 1 p.m. Saturday, according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency tracker.
“Thousands of Eversource employees continue around-the-clock work to restore power as quickly as safely possible during this important time for many of our customers,” Eversource said in a Saturday statement. “Our crews made significant progress through the overnight and morning hours in very difficult weather conditions, responding to damage on the electric system and restoring outages caused by this storm.
“We have restored power to more than 82,000 customers since noon on Thursday, and we expect to substantially complete restoration for the approximately 2,500 customers currently without power in Eastern Massachusetts by the end of today,” the company added.
As of Saturday morning, almost 80,000 customers in New Hampshire remained without power due to downed trees and wires as crews continued working to restore service.
“After completing restoration work in Western Massachusetts, we have made the decision to reallocate some of our crews there to support efforts in Connecticut and New Hampshire, which experienced greater impacts from the storm — while also ensuring that we reserve adequate coverage to respond to any additional issues in Western Mass,” Eversource said.
“We appreciate our customers’ patience and support of our crews who are spending time away from their own families while they work in shifts for 24/7 coverage until all of our customers are restored,” the company added.
More than 140,000 National Grid customers in Massachusetts have had service restored since the storm began, with roughly 11,000 customers without power on Saturday.
“Our crews worked in challenging conditions last night and remain dedicated to restoring customers as quickly as possible and keeping our teams and the public safe,” said Tanya Moniz-Witten, VP of New England Electric Operations. “We are on track to restore most customers by tonight, and we will continue working until every last customer has had their service restored.”
While power restoration efforts continued, an extremely rare and significant snow band was impacting Martha’s Vineyard on Saturday — and was expected to last through Christmas Day. Ten inches of snow was possible in some spots, and the Cape was also expected to get some snow.
“That will make travel slick,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Leatham. “There will be a lot of drifting with this snow and reduced visibility out there.”
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