A few passing clouds, otherwise generally clear. Low 24F. Winds light and variable..

A few passing clouds, otherwise generally clear. Low 24F. Winds light and variable.

The storm that hit Vermont over the Christmas weekend is among the worst in recent memory.

“Around the Lake Dunmore area was pretty crazy,” said Salisbury Fire Chief Ryan Emilio on Monday. “The craziest I’ve ever seen, and I’ve lived on that lake since 2015.”

Green Mountain Power, the state’s largest electric utility, had restored power to about 93,000 customers by Monday afternoon, with less than 1,000 left to go.

“This one will rank as one of our worst,” said Kristin Carlson, spokeswoman for GMP. “The damage was severe in terms of outages. This will be one of the worst in recent history.”

As of 10:30 a.m. on Monday, Salisbury had the most outages in Vermont with 272. Starksboro had 166, with Leicester in third with 108.

Carlson said the storm hit the state as forecasted, doing much of its damage on the western and southern regions.

Meteorologist Roger Hill said the winds from this “bomb cyclone” event blew from the east/southeast with gusts up to 50 to 60 mph, and possibly up to 70 mph on hilltops. Hill, who lives in Worcester, said trees fell on his property that he’s never had issues with in prior storms. He said winds coming from the west typically knock over trees during a storm.

“To see this east/southeasterly wind do what it did, it was just such a strong, strong impulse that went through,” he said.

Hill said this weather event was caused by an area of low pressure that was quite deep. He said the way the storm developed and curled over the eastern Great Lakes caused such a strong pressure gradient that it created the strong winds. He said there have been several storms in the past here with easterly winds, but not this intense. Hill said winds at the top of Mount Mansfield were clocked at 130 mph and 133 mph winds were clocked on Mount Washington in New Hampshire.

“These are the strongest winds I’ve seen on station record. I’ve been keeping observations in Worcester since I moved here in 1998, and these are by far the strongest winds I’ve even seen in my location,” he said.

Even still, Hill said as bad as things got in Vermont, parts of western New York got it far worse. As of Monday afternoon, officials reported 25 people had been killed by the storm in the Buffalo, New York, area.

In Salisbury, Emilio said he witnessed at least five parked cars with trees on them. His girlfriend’s vehicle was among them.

“We started at about 3:30 a.m. Friday, we started with multiple power poles down, trees down, some calls that involved people’s furnaces and things when the power went out,” he said. “We had to basically cut our way through the roads to get where we needed to go. There were trees down everywhere, power poles sheared right off, cars crushed in people’s driveways by trees.”

According to the Associated Press, Winter Storm Elliott, as it was dubbed by The Weather Channel, impacted much of the country and caused the death of at least 34 people.

On Friday, in Castleton, the storm knocked down a tree, ultimately killing Joyce Ricard, 51, of 234 East Creek Drive. Castleton Police said they, the Castleton Fire Department, Castleton First Responders, and Regional Ambulance were sent to Richard’s home at 7:15 a.m. and found her behind the house in a semi-conscious state under the fallen tree. She was taken to Rutland Regional Medical Center, and at 10 a.m. was pronounced deceased.

This was the second consecutive weekend a powerful storm ripped through the region.

“This one seemed to have more twists and turns to it with what was going on while the storm was happening,” said Castleton Town Manager Mike Jones. “We had activated our Emergency Operations Center at 8 a.m. on Friday morning and we had that EOC open all the way until midnight.”

According to Jones, in one area the rail crossing bars went down and wouldn’t come back up. Luckily the town’s emergency management plan had a number on hand for Vermont Railways and the problem got fixed.

He said that two men in a pickup truck with a plow and salting equipment accidentally drove into Glen Lake and had to break into a neighboring house to keep from freezing. A town plow truck had to go out ahead of the fire department, and along the way it was blocked by a GMP truck turned sideways.

Police have notified the homeowner of the incident, Jones said, and the state was informed of the truck in the lake, which was later removed by three tow trucks.

Police Chief Peter Mantello stated Monday that more information on the truck incident will be released soon.

He said that at one point Castleton had the second-highest number of GMP customers without power, the first being Middlebury.

Jones said he is pleased with how well town officials communicated with each other in spite of the mass of problems posed by the storm. Many worked long hours and came in late at night to see things through.

One thing the town will have to look into soon is emergency power supplies to its sewage pump stations, he said. There were some backups reported and there was some difficulty getting a generator to work at one of the pump stations.

“I think we did pretty damn well for what was going on around us,” he said.

The storm was followed by bitter cold, which for many was the real worry.

A warming shelter was opened Saturday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the former Castleton Village School, said Jones. “After it closed, a warming shelter was set up at the American Legion until 7 p.m. Jones said it appears neither ended up being needed.”

Carlson said that GMP was well prepared for the storm, having retained the workforce it called up the weekend before to manage that event.

“Our crews have worked in some really tough conditions overnight,” she said. “Right after the storm hit, it got very cold, it was windy, there was icing. Our line crews are trained to work in all kinds of conditions, and that’s what they do.”

In Central Vermont, the Barre area also was among those places still recovering on Monday, with the Washington Electric Cooperative still hard at work restoring power to 2,300 of its 11,000 customers.

Staff Writer Eric Blaisdell contributed to this report.

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