A winter storm Sunday into Monday left tens of thousands of people across the state without power.

As of 8:30 a.m. Monday, more than 30,000 customers were without power, according to the New Hampshire Department of Safety’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. According to Eversource, local outage numbers shortly after 2 p.m. Monday included 612 of the 721 customers in Mason, 663 of the 712 customers in Temple and 385 out of 898 in Greenfield.

“Keep you and your family safe if you lose power,” stated Robert Buxton, director of the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. “Practice power outage safety. Never run a generator indoors. If you come across downed wires, stay away and call 911.”

According to Homeland Security and Emergency Management, people should report power outages to their utility provider every 24 hours until it is restored.

Buxton also recommended staying informed by signing up for NH Alerts and monitoring National Weather Service radio or broadcast weather reports, using extra caution while driving, using flashlights and not candles for emergency lighting, not using a gas range or oven as an alternate source of heat only using generators that have been wired to the house electrical service by a professional electrician and never running a generator inside a building or in an enclosed space and keep them 10 feet away from buildings with the exhaust pointed away.

Local incidents

Local incidents caused by the storm included Jaffrey police responding to several incidents related to the snow on Sunday night and Monday morning, according to police reports. On Sunday night at 9:30 p.m., police responded to a report of a tree down on wires on North Street, but were unable to locate the downed tree.

On Monday at 5:52 a.m., police responded to a report of a vehicle hitting a guardrail on Peterborough Street. When police checked the area, the vehicle had left the scene, but there was evidence of a vehicle striking a guardrail just north of Old Sharon Road. The guardrail was not damaged.

Later that morning, at 8:47 a.m., police responded to the intersection of Main Street and River Street for a two-car crash, where Chalene Finnegan, 50, of Troy, traveled through the intersection during a red light after snow had slid from the roof of her 2017 Nissan Pathfinder onto her windshield, blocking her vision.

Finnegan’s vehicle hit a 2016 Ford pickup, driven by Timothy Lafreniere, 60, of Jaffrey, who was crossing the intersection on a green light.

Lyndeborough Police Chief Rance Deware reported that there had been no serious crashes in town due to the snow over the weekend, but on Monday, police responded to some reports of wires or tree limbs down due to the snow. At 4:50 a.m., Deware responded to a report of wires down of Center Road, which caused power outages in the area that were still ongoing Monday morning. He said a limb had caused the wires to hang low, which were then caught by a passing state plow truck, bringing them down. He also removed a tree limb blocking Cram Hill Road.

The Wilton-Lyndeborough, ConVal, Mascenic and Jaffrey-Rindge school districts were closed Monday, as was Dublin School.

Editor Bill Fonda contributed to this story.

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