Post-Christmas Snow Storm Unwraps Winter

By Andrew Gorosko

& Shannon Hicks

It came with plenty of warning, and it seems like most of Newtown listened to the forecasts that came before the first snow storm of the winter of 2010-11 arrived early Sunday afternoon. While some cars were on the roads during the afternoon and early evening of December 26, by sundown most roads were clear of traffic other than town and state highway plows and private plows, all already hard at work.

By early Monday morning more residents were beginning to cautiously make their way out of their homes. While some had a lot of shoveling and snow blowing ahead of them, others were ready to take on the roads. Still others were ready to get out and play on sleds or skates.

The storm dumped at least a foot of snow across town. While it is hard to gauge the accumulation due to winds and drifting, it is safe to say that Newtown was squarely hit by a big post-Christmas snow storm. Fresh snow is covering everything, from buildings and ponds to many automobiles and pine roping along fencelines. Five days after its calendar start, winter has indeed arrived.

The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a number of advisories and warnings by late afternoon Saturday, December 25, with a Winter Weather Warning that included northern Fairfield County. That warning was effective 6 am Sunday, December 26, through 6 pm Monday, December 27.

The first snow started to arrive by noon Sunday. The Winter Weather Warning was canceled, and NWS instead issued its first Blizzard Warning of the season. Town crews, fully prepared with their snow plows and sanders, were out and working by early afternoon. Most town employees worked straight through until 3:30 Monday afternoon.

“The duty man actually had conversations with me at 11 am Sunday morning, and we said ‘Start calling them in’ at that point,” said Fred Hurley, the director of Newtown’s Public Works Department. “The first flakes were coming down then. It went from a few flakes to a full-blown storm in just over hour. Within an hour and a half everybody was on board, and they got in just before the main storm.”

Sunday’s snow and wind were very steady all afternoon, through the overnight hours and well into Monday morning. By 12:30 Monday, the sun was shining and the wind was beginning to die down. Town crews were beginning to take staggered lunch breaks, but were still out in force.

The wind continued to blow snow across roadways almost as soon as they were being plowed. Plows were having a nearly impossible time keeping up with the winds that carried snow from Taunton Lake onto the roads surrounding the lake.

By 2 pm town crews were beginning to see a break in the weather. With the sun out, the air was not exactly warm, but roadways were warming up enough that some of the more traveled roadways were beginning to turn to slush. Passing plows were finally leaving seeing asphalt and dirt behind them.

“Most of the roads were opened up by 4 o’clock Monday,” said Mr Hurley. “We had a couple of small crews on until about 5 that night, and then a handful of guys until about 8. They stayed on because there was still drifting conditions that were closing the roads periodically, so they were going out to help reopen roads.”

The Blizzard Warning was lifted at noon as scheduled, but a Winter Weather Advisory remained in effect until midnight. The wind stuck around until late Tuesday, however.

“The wind created two different kinds of problems,” said Mr Hurley. “One was blowing wind that would drive snow in, so after a road was plowed it would just cover with snow. We had many roads that we had to go over a number of times just to keep them open.”

Phones at the Town Highway Department’s office on Turkey Hill Road were still ringing regularly on Tuesday. Residents called to complain that their roads had not yet been touched, when in fact wind was the culprit in most cases of roads looking like they had not yet been plowed.

“The other was the wind hitting tree branches, that would then hit the power lines,” he added. “We didn’t have a huge number of people in town without power. but we still had some. And frankly if we didn’t have some of those storms this fall that took some of the trees down then, we would have had more issues with trees falling on power lines this week.

“The highest wind speed I’m aware of was west of us, in Poughkeepsie, and they had 74 miles per hour,” Mr Hurley said. “That’s the highest that I heard documented, but 50 and 60 knot winds were certainly recorded in towns around us. That’s pretty severe wind.”

Surprisingly Light Power Outages

Winds seemed unceasing for hours, making it very surprising that more residents were not affected by power outages. Shortly after noon on Monday, Connecticut Light & Power was reporting just 96 outages in town. That number represents just .88 percent of CL&P’s 10,850 customers in Newtown.

Most towns across the state that are served by CL&P, in fact, were spared wind issues, with many reporting power issues with one to two percent of their customers.

While CL&P had been able to remain on top of most of its power outages for most of the state through the first part of the storm, the utility company lost a little ground due to Monday’s winds. A large tree that fell near the intersection of Hanover Road at Butterfield and Tamarack roads pulled wires with it. At the same time, a number of homes in the immediate area also lost electricity — and heat.

In Hattertown, a utility pole and its wires fell completely across the roadway near 49 Castle Meadow Road, which caused a road closure that lasted until just before 9 pm Tuesday. Fortunately, that damage did not lead to a loss of electricity in the immediate area.

By 3:30, the utility was reporting that 162 of its Newtown customers were without power. Outages occurred because falling trees and tree segments came into contact with electrical equipment, damaging it.

On Wednesday CL&P spokeswoman Katie Blint said that at the peak of electrical outages in Newtown, at about 8 pm on December 27, there were about 374 CL&P customers without electricity. By 2:42 pm on December 28, there were only two customers in Newtown without electricity, Ms Blint said.

Later that afternoon, however, while a crew was replacing the snapped pole and broken transformer on Castle Meadow Road, a segment of the Historic Hattertown area lost power for about five hours.

Statewide, CL&P restored electric service to more than 81,000 customers, Ms Blint said. The firm has 1.23 million customers in Connecticut.

Road Closures Ignored

There were sections of town, however, where residents had to remain in their homes or find detours due to road closures. The areas of 169 and 25 Taunton Hill Road each had large trees fall, which led to roads being temporarily closed on Monday morning.

On Monday, Hook & Ladder firefighters were called to the four-way intersection of Hanover Road, Butterfield and Tamarak Road after a utility pole fell and pulled wires with it. Until a CL&P crew could get to the scene, the intersection had to be closed, so firefighters put out cones and yellow tape to close the intersection.

Some drivers decided to not only ignore the barricades, they reportedly moved them and drove around them, putting their lives and the lives of fire responders in danger if they had come in contact with the live wires the barricades were set up to keep vehicles and individuals away from.

A similar occurrence happened on Tuesday, where a day earlier a downed pole and wires necessitated the use of barricades in front of 17 Scudder Road. By early Tuesday morning the pole and wires had not yet been repaired by CL&P — who themselves were still busy responding to calls across the state — but people were nevertheless driving around the safety cones and caution tape or even taking it upon themselves to move the barricades off the roadway. Town crews requested additional barricades to be placed in the area, and they arrived around 1 pm

“There are two things wrong with that: it’s a dangerous practice to move those cones and barriers,” Mr Hurley said on Wednesday. “We had to literally put barriers in some places two and three times.

“On Hanover and Tamarack, we heard from a homeowner who watched two trucks who literally drove through the barriers and tape,” he said. “They stopped just short of hitting the wires that were hanging down. I don’t know where their heads are. We’re not putting out these cautions because we think it’s a fun thing to do. People should honor that.”

Playing It Safe

First Selectman Pat Llodra played it safe on Monday, deciding to keep all town offices closed for the day. Many businesses also stayed closed for the day, or opted to open later, once roads were safe for employees and customers.

With schools on their holiday break, there was also little worry over students being safely carried to their respective schools by bus or parent.

With so many people taking heed of early forecasts of a large storm, most people seemed to have played it safe by staying off the roads. Newtown Police Department had relatively few motor vehicle accidents to contend with.

“There were only a few minor accidents,” confirmed Sergeant David Kullgren.

Meteorologist Gary Lessor, the assistant director of The Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, had some surprising news this week.

“The storm was officially the Blizzard of 2010, but was not actually a blizzard in Newtown,” he said on Wednesday. “Snowfall was 11 to 14 inches in the region, with wind gusts to 55 mph. The storm’s snowfall did not measure up to several storms of last year, but the winds were unusual.

“The storm developed along the Carolina coastline Saturday and moved northward Sunday. Basically, the storm lasted from 10 am on Sunday to 9 am on Monday, although the winds continued into Monday night.”

Visit NewtownBee.com for additional photos and a slideshow of images from the first snow storm of the 2010-11 season.