High Winds And Rain Rattle Cape, Leave Many Without Power
High winds and rain shook the Upper Cape Monday night, leaving smatterings of power outages and fallen trees in their wake.
The National Weather Service issued a high wind and storm advisory for Cape Cod and the islands from Monday, April 18, through 10 AM the next day. Wind speeds of up to 65 miles per hour were reported in Barnstable County.
According to Eversource, hundreds of power outages were reported. A notable cluster of outages in Woods Hole affected more than 300 customers, according to the Eversource outage map. The cause of the outages was reportedly due to fallen tree limbs.
Overall, about 400 customers in Falmouth, 750 in Sandwich and 300 in Mashpee were without power.
“Our crews have been working hard throughout this storm to restore power to customers and make repairs to equipment damaged by strong winds bringing down trees and tree limbs,” Eversource spokesman Christopher R. McKinnon said in an email. “We have resources spread out across the commonwealth, including coastal areas like Cape Cod that saw the highest wind gusts, and we will continue working on storm cleanup and restoration efforts until all remaining customers’ power is back on.”
Mr. McKinnon also said that power has been restored to more than 24,000 customers throughout the area affected by the storm since 11 PM Monday night using a combination of remote switching, smart switch technology, and line crews. Customers are urged to report any further outages to Eversource either online or by phone.
Falmouth Director of Public Works Peter McConarty said that while there was some damage sustained during the storm, it was minimal.
“We had a few downed branches and trees that we were able to get in the early morning hours this morning,” he said. “There are still a few coming in, the winds are still somewhat high but it was really not as bad as we thought it could’ve been... It was kind of a crazy storm, there were high winds and a lot of rain but it didn’t really affect us that much. Small matters, but nothing big.”
Additionally, the Steamship Authority was forced to cancel trips between Hyannis and Nantucket and Woods Hole and Vineyard Haven on Tuesday morning and early afternoon due to weather conditions. Trips for later Tuesday afternoon appeared to proceed as scheduled.