Chittenden, Addison and Franklin counties remained most affected Thursday afternoon by a windy winter storm that ripped through Vermont two nights earlier, according to a statewide power outages tracker.
VTOutages showed that about 5,000 Vermonters were still without power as of Thursday at 1 p.m., some 36 hours since simultaneous outages peaked at nearly 30,000.
Utility companies reported they were still busy restoring power, though some outages could continue for another day.
Green Mountain Power expects to have all customers fully restored by the end of Thursday, spokesperson Kristin Carlson said. But the Vermont Electric Cooperative said it has been contending with 34 broken poles, which has slowed down its restorations.
“That’s a big job to fix. It’s not just like bringing the wires back up and securing them and moving on,” said Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Coop’s manager of government affairs and members relations. “That’s been really slowing down the restoration compared to other kinds of outages.”
Cohen said some coop customers will remain without power overnight, but she expects all to have their power restored by the end of the day Friday.
“By the end of Friday, we’re expecting to be all cleaned up from this one, just in time for another (storm) to come in,” Cohen said.
That new storm is now expected to roll into the state late Friday evening with strong winds and some snowfall, according to Brooke Taber, a meteorologist in the Burlington office of the National Weather Service.
Taber said peak winds are expected early Saturday morning, though they are likely to be less powerful than those clocked at up to 69 mph earlier this week. The weather service is “particularly concerned” for the Rutland and East Middlebury areas, Taber said.
Similar to their preparation for Tuesday’s storm, utility companies are making sure they will have enough staffing capacity to deal with power outages. Vermont Electric Coop has relied on external crews, some coming from Massachusets, according to Cohen. She said its workforce has tripled.
“This kind of stuff is very labor intensive, so you just need the boots on the ground,” she said.
