‘Winds never let up’: Eversource gives estimate on when power will be restored after storm

BOSTON — Utility crews remain hard at work Tuesday as they race to restore power in communities across Massachusetts after an intense storm blew through on Monday with damaging wind gusts and drenching downpours, leaving hundreds of thousands in the dark.

Craig Hallstrom, regional president of electric operations for Eversource, said during a Tuesday morning news conference that “a lot of very mature trees” were ripped from the ground and knocked onto homes and power lines as gusts in some parts of the Bay State clocked in at 90 mph.

“This was a significant event,” Hallstrom said. “A lot of tree damage. Trees hitting homes, hitting vehicles.”

Hallstrom said there are hundreds of crews working in towns and cities across the state, and that power was restored to 160,000 customers by Monday night. As of Tuesday afternoon, there were still more than 100,000 outages, many of which were in southeastern Massachusetts.

The persistent and powerful wind gusts throughout the day made it difficult to immediately address the outages due to safety protocols that are in place for severe weather events.

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Severe Weather Northeast A large chunk of a 60-foot white pine tree lays across Ellen Briggs' yard in Portland, Maine, on Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023. Utility crews are working to restore power to hundreds of thousands of customers in Maine and some rivers continued to rise following a powerful storm that hit the northeastern U.S. (AP Photo/Patrick Whittle) (Patrick Whittle)

“The winds just never let up,” Hallstrom said. “Our crews, by OSHA guidelines, can’t go up in their buckets above 40 mph.”

Hallstrom estimated that power would be restored to the “majority” of Eversource customers by the day’s end when about 600 crews will be on the ground.

“We expect a majority of our customers to be restored today,” Hallstrom explained. “To have an outage this week, the holidays are coming up, people are preparing, people may be off, so it’s extra frustrating.”

In northern New England, several popular ski areas were forced to close after the storm’s high rainfall totals led to flash flooding.

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