Heavy winds starting Wednesday night have taken a toll on trees, power lines and households in the western Massachusetts region, with significant outages reported.
At around 1:30 a.m., a large tree branch fell on Greenfield Road in Deerfield, breaking the windshield of a moving car on the road, according to Deerfield Police Officer Adam Sokoloski. The driver was not injured.
Sokoloski said the two officers working overnight spent much of their time removing trees and branches from roadways, along with the town’s Department of Public Works. “They started their shift at 11 p.m. with a downed tree across River Road. A good Samaritan cut it up. Then we had a tree down on South Mill River Road and a tree and branch blocking both lanes of North Hillside Road.”
Other roads blocked by branches or downed trees during the earliest hours Thursday were Mill Village Road, Upper Road and River Road, according to Deerfield Officer Adam Sokoloski.
Traffic was still blocked off earlier Thursday morning on Greenfield Road in Deerfield, until the Massachusetts Department of Transportation had the tree removed by a bucket loader.
“Everything was opened up for the morning commute,” said Sokoloski. “The DPW’s going around today picking up branches along sides of the road,” he said.
As of 9 a.m., Eversource’s website indicated that there were 112 outages in Ashfield and 125 outages in Buckland. The rest of Franklin County has seen impacts of the weathers as well, with Conway listed at 53 outages, Deerfield with 88 and Leyden with 74. Greenfield, Bernardston, Shelburne, Leverett, Montague, Northfield and Colrain residents were seeing outages in the lower percentile of 1 to 25 households, but those numbers had dropped to fewer than 15 homes by noon. As of noon, Buckland still had 92 outages, Conway had 44 and Leyden had 56.
“Crews were out all night restoring customers,” said Eversource spokesman Frank Poirot. “The wind gusts brought down trees and limbs, doing extensive damage to our poles and wires.” Poirot said the utility expects to have 99 percent restoration to Franklin County customers by 6 p.m. Thursday.
Several hill towns served by National Grid still had numerous outages by noon Thursday: Heath had four outages, affecting 407 customers (more than half the population); Hawley still had two outages, which affected 142 customers (nearly half the town). Also, according to the utility’s outage map, 85 Orange residents and 60 from Athol remained without power. National Grid said 646 Franklin County customers were still affected by outages, as of noon, and that power was expected to be restored by 4 p.m.
Multiple cases have been reported this morning of trees in roads, with one falling on a home at 405 Route 8 in Shelburne, another blocking traffic on Mountain Road in Northfield and one falling near a utility pole at 96 Hart Road in Conway.
Greenfield lost a few trees overnight, including one on Bernardston Road, near the Stoneleigh-Burnham campus. Montague had to remove a tree blocking the roadway on Route 63 around 1:20 a.m. Charlemont reported a tree down near the East Hawley-West Hawley road intersection, blocking travel. Wires were reported down in many places.
This story will be updated.