South Shore shelters, charging stations open Tuesday as crews restore power after storm

The lights are still off for many South Shore residents after Monday’s high winds and rain knocked out power across the region. Many residents might not see full power restoration until late Thursday night, according to National Grid[1], whose outage map showed 31,822 customers in Plymouth County and 14,872 in Norfolk County as being without electricity of 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Eversource[2] likewise continues to deal with thousands of outages in its service areas. Towns including Plymouth and Duxbury each have more than 4,500 customers still in the dark. Carver, Marshfield and other area towns have at least a few thousand outages remaining.

Duxbury firefighters responded to more than 100 calls in the last 24 hours, according to an X post[3] at about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Utility workers try to restore power on School Street in Marshfield on Tuesday. “We currently have 4,509 households without power, which is 64% of the town,” the post stated. “@EversourceMA[4] has a large contingent of resources dedicated to power restoration in town.”

Schools and the senior center were without power. Traffic was blocked on Route 14/West Street, off Route 3. The fallen trees that pulled down power lines and blocked roads throughout the South Shore were felled by wind gusts that clocked in at 60 mph or more during the height of the storm.

Hingham police said officers on the day shift Monday responded to 66 reports of trees or wires down. No one was injured, police said on social media[5].

South Shore school closings

A number of towns along the South Shore canceled school for Tuesday. They include Cohasset, Duxbury, Halifax, Kingston, Marshfield, Norwell, Pembroke, Plympton and Scituate.

Hard-hit Scituate sees improvement

Nearly three-quarters of the town of Scituate served by National Grid was back online by 5 p.m.

Tuesday, according to a post from the town’s official Facebook page. Just that morning, roughly 60% of the town didn’t have power, according to Town Administrator Jim Boudreau, going from about 8,600 customers to 5,500 customers overnight, although full restoration isn’t expected until Thursday. Three roads were still closed, but Boudreau said he expects they will reopen by the end of the day: Mann Lot Road, First Parish Road and the Driftway.

Warming centers at the senior center, library and town hall are open Tuesday and will continue with their regular hours through the week.

Cell Power, a temporary cellphone charging station, is available on Aaron River Road in Cohasset on Tuesday, Dec.

19, 2023. Greg Tompkins swept his rake across his front yard Tuesday afternoon, gathering fallen tree branches and scattered pine needles. It was a familiar motion, as just two days earlier he had finished tidying up his yard before a monster storm trudged through New England.

“I went and did a final leaf blow and cleaned everything up nice. And then this happened,” he said. His neighbors on First Parish Road, though, had a bigger cleanup job and hired a crew.

Down the street, a large downed tree had still blocked traffic flow. But despite the mess and power outage that was expected to continue until midday Thursday, Tompkins was happy to have come out the other side of the storm relatively unscathed. Tompkins and his wife Jane moved to their Scituate home in 2021, one month before the October nor’easter.

Their real estate agent had said there was only one power outage over the last decade. After the first one, they bought a generator. Now, they’ve experienced two outages in two years.

Scituate homeowner Greg Tompkins works on his property with help from a professional tree service. When he bought his home two years ago, he was told they never lose power. He lives off First Parish Road.

“I’m learning every year, something different pops up in Scituate,” he said. The couple was home Monday when the worst of the storm hit. He heard the “snap” and “bang” of a tree, then another, that fell under the pressure of the fierce winds.

“It was just scary,” he said. “I kept looking at the pines going back and forth.” Now in the calm of the aftermath and the shining sun, all there was to do was wait until the power returned and clean up. “Hope we never live through this again.

But I think because this is Scituate, we will.” On Front Street, restaurants and storefronts were starting to reopen after regaining power or maintaining theirs with a generator. The Hiberian Tavern had opened earlier than usual on Tuesday to offer anyone a warm place to sit, charge their devices and have a meal.

Co-owner Michael Carlyle said the Irish pub added the generator when it opened in 2019, knowing that Scituate was prone to storm impacts. The investment, though expensive, was worth their while. “When the power goes out, we’re basically the only ones in town that have power,” he said.

The restaurant was open until 11 p.m. the day of the storm, serving regulars and several families as well. “It also gives people a break just to get out of the house,” he said of restaurants and other places being open when the power is out. “I sat in the house last night, and it was dark. There’s nothing you can do.”

Nearby in Cohasset, Barbara Daniels was on stroll with her dog Max and the three young boys she babysits, who were out of school for the day and full of energy. Daniels was about to head out to a friend’s house Monday to bake holiday cookies – chocolate peanut butter, chocolate chip, sugar cookies and others – but the weather had other plans. Just as she put a K-Cup in the machine to make coffee, the power went out.

“I loaded up all my stuff in the car. I’m heading out my driveway. I went to pick up a branch, a tree fell, and I said, ‘Nope, not today.

I’m going back,'” she said. So she stayed home and watched the world sway outside, describing the wind as sounding like “a train coming through.” “You couldn’t hear anything else,” she said.

But she was very matter-of-fact about her lack of electricity. “Wishing and hoping isn’t going to make it better. You just have to wait until it comes back on,” she said. “I’m thinking, at least it’s not four feet of snow we’re buried under.”

Hanover fatality and heavy storm damage

An 89-year-old Hingham man[6] was killed when a tree fell on a camper trailer in Hanover on Monday morning.

He was identified as Robert Horky, 89. The accident occurred outside 99 Industrial Way, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said in a statement. Bill Thistle, who rented property from Horky and knew him for over a decade, told WCVB[7] that Horky “was a great man.

He was nice to us all the time, a great landlord.” In Cohasset, a large branch fell onto a southbound vehicle carrying a mother and her infant child on Route 3A at about 10 a.m., Cohasset police said[8].

Cohasset police posted this picture on social media with its report of a tree hitting a car on Route 3A on Monday morning. The driver and her infant suffered minor injuries, police said. More: At least 1 dead as Level 3 storm wreaks havoc on South Shore: What we saw Monday[9]

Both had minor injuries and were taken to South Shore Hospital by Cohasset firefighters. Route 3A was closed for about 30 minutes to clear debris, police said. In Hingham, the Plymouth River School was evacuated after a tree fell on the computer lab ceiling.

All students were taken to Hingham High School on school buses and no students or staff were near the computer lab when the tree fell, Boston 25 News reported.

Tree removal, construction companies try to keep up with demand

Several homes were damaged on the South Shore, including some that sustained extensive damage when trees landed on roofs.

A fallen tree caused significant damage to this Franklin Street home in Weymouth on Monday, Dec.

18, 2023. A home on Franklin Street in Weymouth near the Tufts Library was among them.

Crews from Plymouth-based Munroe Roofing and Construction[10] were out Tuesday morning to shore up the home ahead of insurance adjusters and eventually longtime fixes. Owner NIck Munroe said his business is primarily involved in general contracting construction, but he adds tree removal to his list of services when needed. “The phone won’t stop ringing,” he said of the volume of people seeking his services after Monday’s storm. “We’re taking it as it comes and trying to keep up as best we can.”

He said the work on the Franklin Street home will probably last two to three days, after which point the homeowners will need likely need additional work done to fully bring it back to its pre-storm state.

Nick Munroe, owner of Munroe Roofing and Construction, supervises workers as they repair a damaged home on Franklin Street in Weymouth that was hit by a felled tree during Monday’s storm. Munroe, who started what would become his business as a teenager around 20 years ago, was not surprised how damaging the high winds would turn out to be. “I just had to open my door,” he said. “When you see wind like that, you know what’s going to happen.”

YMCA and other programs canceled for the day

In Hanover and Quincy, the South Shore YMCA’s Emilson and Hale Family branches remained closed this morning.

The Y’s Gymnastics Center and the before- and after-school programs in Norwell and Scituate also remained closed today due to the power outages. The Hanover branch planned to reopen at 3 p.m. Tuesday with power restored.

Quincy police urge safety precautions

Monday night on Facebook, Quincy police advised residents to stay away from downed power lines and trees and wait until daylight to assess damage.

Allow National Grid up to 72 hours to restore power, police said. They asked residents to check on the well-being of elderly family members and neighbors.

Weymouth, Plymouth, Hanson make list of top wind gusts

The National Weather Service released the highest wind gust reports from each county in Massachusetts as of 5:20 p.m. Monday.

The “observations are collected from a variety of sources with varying equipment and exposures. … Not all data listed are considered official,” according to the service. Blue Hill Observatory had the highest reported wind gust at 90 mph.

Blue Hill is the highest point in Massachusetts east of Interstate 495. The following locations topped the list of highest wind gusts reported:

• Logan Airport: 68 mph as of 10:53 a.m.

• Dighton: 66 mph as of 10:26 a.m.

• Norwood Airport: 67 mph as of 10:35 a.m.

• Nantucket Airport: 67 mph as of 12:35 p.m.

• Weymouth: 63 mph as of 10:38 a.m.

• Hyannis Airport: 63 mph as of 12:27 p.m.

• Taunton Airport: 63 mph as of 11 a.m.

• New Bedford Airport: 62 mph as of 10:34 a.m.

• Chelsea: 61 mph as of 12:04 p.m.

• Plymouth Airport: 60 mph as of 9:15 a.m.

• Bedford Airport: 56 mph as of 10:58 a.m.

• Chatham Airport: 56 mph as of 12:04 p.m.

• Martha’s Vineyard Airport: 56 mph as of 12:27 p.m.

• Beverly Airport: 55 mph as of 11:41 a.m.

• Provincetown Airport: 49 mph as of 10:16 a.m.

• Worcester Airport: 52 mph as of 10:32 a.m.

• Marshfield Airport: 51 mph as of 12:55 p.m.

• Hanson: 50 mph as of 11:58 a.m.

• Fitchburg Airport: 45 mph as of 10:30 a.m.

• Lawrence Airport: 41 mph as of 11:13 a.m.

• Lexington: 41 mph as of 11:44 a.m.

• East Springfield: 40 mph as of 6:15 a.m.

• Orange Airport: 36 mph as of 6:25 a.m.

Massachusetts rain totals

The National Weather Service also released top rain totals from throughout the state along with the wind data. Monday’s totals, from highest to lowest, include the following locations:

• Bedford Airport: 3.43 inches as of 5:02 p.m.

• Norwood Airport: 3.18 inches as of 4:53 p.m.

• Westfield-Barnes Airport: 2.94 inches as of 4:53 p.m.

• Lawrence Airport: 2.84 inches as of 5:08 p.m.

• Taunton Airport: 2.74 inches as of 4:52 p.m.

• Worcester Airport: 2.68 inches as of 5:01 p.m.

• Beverly Airport: 2.31 inches as of 5:06 p.m.

• Orange Airport: 2.12 inches as of 4:52 p.m.

• Logan Airport: 2.01 inches as of 4:54 p.m.

• New Bedford Airport: 1.96 inches as of 4:53 p.m.

• Plymouth Airport: 1.67 inches as of 9:52 a.m.

• Martha’s Vineyard Airport: 0.97 inches as of 5:06 p.m.

• Provincetown Airport: 0.88 inches as of 5:12 p.m.

• Chatham Airport: 0.85 inches as of 5:13 p.m.

• Hyannis Airport: 0.61 inches as of 4:56 p.m.

• Nantucket Airport: 0.49 inches as of 4:53 p.m.

Check back often as outage numbers and other information and damage reports become available throughout the day.

Patriot Ledger staff contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Crews work on power lines Tuesday as South Shore assesses storm damage[11]

References

1. ^ National Grid (outagemap.ma.nationalgridus.com)
2. ^ Eversource (outagemap.eversource.com)
3. ^ an X post (twitter.com)
4. ^ @EversourceMA (twitter.com)
5. ^ police said on social media (twitter.com)
6. ^ 89-year-old Hingham man (www.patriotledger.com)
7. ^ told WCVB (www.wcvb.com)
8. ^ Cohasset police said (twitter.com)
9. ^ At least 1 dead as Level 3 storm wreaks havoc on South Shore: What we saw Monday (www.patriotledger.com)
10. ^ Munroe Roofing and Construction (www.google.com)
11. ^ Crews work on power lines Tuesday as South Shore assesses storm damage (www.patriotledger.com)