A spring storm with mixed precipitation and blustery wind has brought down trees and power lines.
National Grid spokesman David Bertola says the severe winds and wintry mix packed quite a punch.
"As heavy wet snow continues to move through the Capital Region today, we've brought in additional crews to help respond to the storm damage, which includes a lot of downed trees and powerlines and utility poles, much like we experienced in the area two weeks ago. And it's difficult in many instances to assess damage while restoring power. As we know, folks get frustrated when they go to our outage map and see, like in the town of Chester, or Thurman, or Stoney Creek as examples, on our website it says 'assessing condition.' We just haven't been able to get out there and really, truly take a look at the damage and assign the time for our estimated restoration. So the work began last night. Some of the hardest scenarios were Warren, Saratoga and Rensselaer counties. And as always our work will continue until everyone's power is restored. We're looking at around 32,000 without service that includes some parts of Central New York as well," Bertola said.
Sarah Warren with New York State Electric and Gas details the impact on its customers. "Yesterday we had two sections of very severe winds impact the Capital Region, starting at 7pm last night and continuing all the way until 5am this morning. We were seeing winds over 60 miles per hour come through, so that caused really severe damage across the region. Broken poles, uprooted trees, blocked roads. So our crews have been out overnight. They're out today. And they're battling, you know, slippery roads and tough conditions to restore power as soon as possible. We expect our restoration efforts to go into tomorrow, with a small number of customers being restored Saturday. So customers should continue to check their accounts for specific estimated times of restoration. We're continuing to assess damage and we will be filling in specific restoration times for customers throughout the day today," said Warren.
Albany County Department of Public Works Commissioner Lisa Ramundo advises motorists that cleanup continues in outlying areas. "Currently, we're still getting wet heavy snow in the hill towns. The road conditions are slowly improving and will be much better this afternoon. The commute home will be, hopefully, all of the county roadways will be cleared. There's currently no power lines down to our knowledge in the hills. And all roads are open," Ramundo said.
In the Hudson Valley, Central Hudson's Joe Jenkins says heavy snow and winds left several customers in the dark... "...predominantly on the eastern side of our service area in Dutchess county where we saw the majority of our outages. But given the isolated nature of them, we did have mutual assistance crews here overnight. We should be able to restore the vast majority of those customers and have electricity back on to them by the end of the day today," said Jenkins.
Jenkins says estimated restoration times will be posted on the utility's online map as soon as they become available, adding "If you see a downed power line, make sure that you stay at least 30 feet away and assume that that downed power line could be live."
The storm is expected to wind down through late afternoon.
