Throughout the Bay State on Friday morning, almost 10,000 people remained without electricity as National Grid and WMECO crews worked around the clock to make repairs from Thursday's storm.
Lightning from a line of severe thunderstorms flashes over downtown New London, Conn. Thursday, June 9, 2011. A line of powerful thunderstorms sweeping across Connecticut has knocked out power to thousands of homes. Connecticut Light & Power says close to 90,000 homes and businesses have lost electricity. (AP Photo/The Day, Tim Cook)This is an update of a story posted on Thursday at 7:15 p.m.
SPRINGFIELD - With the three tornadoes that ripped a path of destruction from Westfield to Sturbridge on June 1 still fresh in people's minds, the region was weary on Thursday as thunderstorms delivered torrents of rain, strong winds and lightening.
Fortunately the damage, although widespread, amounted to little in comparison to last week's devastation which is still being dealt with as Western Massachusetts communities are picking up the pieces and rebuilding their lives.
Throughout the Bay State on Friday morning, almost 10,000 people remained without electricity as National Grid and Western Mass. Electric Company crews worked around the clock to make repairs from Thursday's storm. Initially 20,000 customers were without electricity following the violent weather.
According to National Grid, as of 4:05 a.m., 3,434 customers across the state were without power. The 15 affected National Grid customers in Hampshire County were slated to have power restored by 1 p.m. Friday with the few Franklin County customers reporting outages scheduled to have service restored by 3 p.m.
WMECO's outages totaled 5,977 around 5 a.m., with Montague accounting for 899 customers without power, followed by Longmeadow with 777 and 480 in Springfield.
Additionally, there were still 269 outages reported in Southwick, 239 in Greenfield, 172 in Deerfield, 138 in Agawam, 118 in West Springfield and 97 in Ludlow as of early Friday morning.
Most roads in the region were cleared of large trees and branches that fell in Thursday's storm but morning commuters are reminded to use caution as some debris may have been left behind on side streets.
Reporters from ABC-40 speak with local residents affected by Thursday's storm
Connecticut Light and Power reported a total of 61,937 customers without electricity as of Friday morning, accounting for five percent of its overall customers.
Granby and East Granby had a total of 33 outages reported, but Suffield remained in almost total darkness with 2,400 customers, 40 percent of the town's total customers, without power.
Neighboring Enfield reported 1,120 customers without power while Hartford, East Hartford and West Hartford reported a total of 2,738.
For a list of road closures throughout Connecticut, click here.