March held off its “in like a lion” for one day, pouncing on Franklin County Thursday with wind gusts of up to 55 mph and subsequent power outages.
By late afternoon, power was restored to most of the Eversource and National Grid customers, although crews were still out making repairs.
“The wind is still out there,” Eversouce spokeswoman Priscilla Ress said, at about 4:30 p.m. “We still have about 1,000 customers within our service area out. But Franklin County looks in pretty good shape, now.”
By 5 p.m., National Grid still had about 177 customers without power within its Franklin County coverage area. Spokesman Bob Kievra said National Grid hopes to have all Franklin County customers’ power restored by about 7 p.m.
In Conway, where people are still recovering from Saturday’s freak tornado, trees came down on wires at about 5 a.m., knocking out power to nearly half the town, according to Ress. About 500 customers were without power in Conway for about an hour, according to Ress. More repair work in Conway was planned for Thursday afternoon.
Eversource had replaced at least two dozen utility poles in Conway earlier this week, and Ress noted that downed trees damaged wires but didn’t break any poles Thursday morning.
“The good news is we have advanced switching,” Ress said. She said advanced switching allows the utility to reroute electricity to homes that would otherwise have to wait until full repairs have been completed. “It allows us to restore power more quickly and it makes the lengths of outages much shorter,” she said.
Athol State Police reported trees were blown down on Quarry Road and Route 78 in Warwick, resulting in some power line losses. Also, a tree, knocked down near the General Store on Route 202 in New Salem was removed by MassHighway early Thursday morning.
Near the Buckland entrance to Shelburne Falls, at Route 2 and State Street, a downed tree took out wires, which caught fire and took out power for 393 customers in the village (234 on the Shelburne side, 159 in Buckland).
Also, a tree on power lines closed Dickinson Street in Northfield at around 10:30 a.m.
Eversource also reported that 48 Leyden customers and five Colrain households lost power Thursday morning.
At about 11 a.m., National Grid reported that 57 customers in the Charlemont area were without power, and there were still a few customers without power in Warwick.