POWERLESS

...To quote the very appropriate Keene Sentinel headline on Friday.

I personnally just got power back at 9:30 this morning totalling 54 hours without electricity. This was no doubt an inconvenience, but it is nothing compared to the time that many in central NH down into central MA will have to deal with.

From the Sentinel:

About 1.3 million homes and businesses from Pennsylvania to Maine were plunged into the dark, and cold, by the storm that coated trees and wires with ice Thursday night into Friday. Most of the outages were in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and New York. Nearly 880,000 remained without power Saturday afternoon.

At the peak Friday, more than 460,000 customers lost power in New Hampshire, the worst power outage in state history. About 368,000 still were in the dark Saturday afternoon.

Another 35,000 lost power in Massachusetts, down to about 200,000 Saturday. About 311,000 customers were knocked out in upstate New York, with at least 185,000 still without power Saturday.

About 170,000 of the quarter million affected in Maine still were in the dark Saturday.

Vermont utilities reported just under 14,000 customers remained without power Saturday afternoon, down from about 40,000. About 4,400 homes and businesses in northwestern Connecticut without power, down from 16,500. Neaerly all 11,000 outages in northeastern Pennsylvania were restored by Saturday.

Storm summary: Ice accretion was very elevation dependent. While my backyard at 1000ft in Keene recorded .6" of ice, downtown Keene at 500ft only had a light glaze. In addition, it was the eastern slopes that had the worst ice accumulation up to an inch from central NH into central MA. In addition to ice, rainfall between 2.5 and 6 inches raised many rivers over their banks in SNE. Winds on the backside of the storm gusted between 30 and 50mph, largely contributing to the historical outages.

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Moving on, because the weather never pauses, after a very cold day yesterday, temperatures will rise into the 30's today, and around 50 on Monday with some rain. After a frontal passage on Tuesday, much colder temperatures will return, with a round of snow and ice likely Wednesday.