Updated at 6:11 p.m.
UNDERHILL — Nancy McRae awoke on Wednesday morning to find her solar tracker leaning on its side like a felled tree, with its steel foundation bent and one of its solar panels thrust into her front lawn.
“I guess I was asleep when it happened, but I came out this morning and there it was like that,” McRae said Wednesday, surveying the damage from the powerful winter storm that tore through Vermont the night before.
Fierce wind gusts that approached 70 mph in some places targeted the western part of the state in the predawn hours, damaging barns, felling trees, closing roads and leaving utilities scrambling to restore power to thousands of people.
VTOutages showed that outages peaked at nearly 30,000 overnight, with more than 12,800 homes and businesses still unconnected as of 6 p.m. Utility officials warned that some could be without electricity for days while meteorologists forecast a second similar storm could hit the state Friday night.
McRae, who lives on a hill in Underhill, was among those relying on a generator on Wednesday. She noted that the tracker — solar panels atop a metal pole that rotates to follow the sun — is equipped with a device to measure wind speed, which clocked gusts at around 60 mph before its foundation was uprooted.
The wind also scattered fallen branches across her yard and driveway and blew the back doors off her small barn. “It’s OK,” she said. “They weren’t very good doors anyway.”
The National Weather Service reported wind gusts reached 69 mph at Burlington International Airport in South Burlington — the highest reading in the region — and topped 50 mph in other Chittenden, Addison and Rutland county towns. They peaked around 1:30 or 2 a.m., according to National Weather Service meteorologist Adrianna Kremer.
As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, more than 28,000 customers were without power, according to VTOutages. By 4 p.m., outages had dropped to about 17,300, with the largest numbers of outages reported in Chittenden, Addison, Orleans, Franklin, Rutland and Caledonia counties.
High wind speeds prevented Vermont Electric Co-op from getting buckets in the air during the storm, said Andrea Cohen, the cooperative’s government affairs and member relations manager. Certain parts of the organization’s territory were “hit hard,” she wrote in an email, noting 17 broken poles and 20% of the system without power as of 10:30 a.m.
As wind speeds reduced, restorations were underway in the afternoon, Cohen said, but she also noted that “this will be a multi-day event for some members unfortunately.”
Nearly 40,000 Green Mountain Power customers lost power over the course of the storm, and all but about 4,000 had been restored by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, according to spokesperson Kristin Kelly. She noted the company had increased its field force prior to the storm.
“Where this storm hit, the damage it left was severe,” she said. Some customers in the “remote and hardest hit areas” might not have power before the end of the day, Kelly warned.
The gusts were paired with heavy precipitation — ranging from snow to rain — that began Tuesday afternoon, amounting to a few inches across most of the state and topping 10 inches in Braintree and Randolph, according to the National Weather Service.
Several roads were closed Wednesday morning due to downed trees and utility lines, according to New England 511. Though some had reopened by the afternoon, others remained impassable, including Route 15 in Cambridge, at the Wrong Way Bridge, and Route 116 in Bristol, from Hewitt Road to River Road.
Roads and driveways across Lamoille County were littered with fallen tree limbs, and other forms of wind damage appeared to be widespread. In Cambridge, the gusts caused catastrophic damage to the property of Sen. Richard Westman, R-Lamoille, requiring the state senator to rush home from Montpelier Wednesday morning and miss the day’s legislative session.
According to Westman, strong winds Tuesday night tore off about a third of the roof of his 240-foot barn, where he stores antique cars, boats and hay.
“We suffered a lot of damage last night,” Westman said. “I woke up this morning to texts and pictures of the damage, so I came home.”
The storm also knocked down trees throughout Westman’s property, temporarily blocking his driveway and leaving him without power until at least the weekend, the senator said.
“Nobody was hurt. As long as nobody was hurt — that’s what matters,” Westman said.
Just down the road from Westman’s property, Valley Dream Farm also appeared to have suffered dramatically from Tuesday night’s storm.
The three hoop houses on the property had collapsed, leaving their metal frames bare and their contents exposed to the rain.
Multiple attempts to knock on the door of the farm house and adjacent residence were unsuccessful. The owners of the farm could not otherwise be reached for comment.
Many schools around the state delayed opening times, and some schools in at least 10 counties closed entirely. Several ski resorts reported wind holds, delaying the operation of chairlifts and gondolas.
Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport was running “pretty much business as usual,” according to spokesperson Jeff Bartley, who reported just a single flight cancellation.
By the afternoon, meteorologists at National Weather Service were working on forecasts for a similar storm expected to arrive Friday evening, which could “feature more widespread snow but less in the high-end wind category,” said Seth Kutikoff, a meteorologist in the service’s Burlington office.
Kutikoff cautioned that the preliminary forecast is destined to change in the coming days. But as of Wednesday, he expected the storm could arrive around 5 to 7 p.m. Friday night, with snowfall of 3-6 inches by Saturday morning and the highest totals east of the Greens.
Peak winds are expected on the west side of the mountains and would likely exceed 50 mph, he said, but near-70 mph gusts like those recorded Tuesday night are “not what we expect.”
Winds are forecasted to reach maximum strength Saturday morning, according to Kutikoff. He noted that it’s too soon to predict a possible switch from snow to rain during the storm.
As Wednesday’s cleanup continued, Vermonters should stay away from downed power lines and ensure that any debris is not touching power lines before clearing it, Mark Bosma, a spokesperson for Vermont Emergency Management, told VTDigger in an email. He directed those without power seeking a warming shelter or access to electricity to check with their towns, call 2-1-1, or visit an updating list of locations online.
Paul Heintz contributed reporting.
Corrections: An earlier version of this story misnamed a farm in Cambridge. Due to an editing error, a closed road was also misidentified.
