HISTORICAL HOMECOMING--Trip 2

In Tara's New York country neighbor-hood, the scene was one of winter beauty. But in town after town from Grahamsville, New York, to the Hudson River, the storm took its toll. Stop and go lights at intersections hung black and unlit. Last night's 12 inches of snow played havoc with the power. Gas stations, silent and empty, had taped the pumps with yellow CAUTION signs. No electricity, so no power. Hence, no gasoline. We wondered what we would find closer to the water.

Every curve on Interstate #84 brought traffic slow-downs with cars spun out and trucks in the ditches. The radio reported one and a half million customers still out of power, as the snow took down leaf-covered branches.

"Damage is incredible. Unprecedented power outages. Unprecedented destruction," said the newscaster.

We headed home. "The earlier the snow, the less we typically get," said Andy. "If that's true, this will be an easy winter."
But we knew cleaning up October wouldn't be so easy.

"Historic," said Governor Daniel Malloy about outages in Connecticut. "Roads and lawns are littered with branches. More than 840,000 customers are out of electricity in the state. We've never had so many out from a fall storm."
United Illuminating and Connecticut Light and Power (CL&P) warned it might take more than a week to restore power. "There's damage every couple of feet in Litchfield," added a company representative.

West Milford, New Jersey, near Port Jervis got 19 inches. "We were just there," said Andy. And by Sunday evening we learned that more than 32 inches of snow had piled up in a few Massachusetts towns. But Connecticut took it the worst overall with more than 840,000 customers out of power and leaf-covered trees down everywhere.

Four days later, CL&P reported that more than 420,000 in Connecticut were still without power. That was nearly as many as the count when Hurricane Irene devastated the state earlier in the year. In the towns of Seymour and Oxford, 100 percent of the customers claimed no power on Thursday, nearly five full days after the Saturday night barrage.

But we lucked out. We came home to the aftermath of the worst October snow storm in the state's history, and, even though we lost six trees, our lights only flickered once.