Sunday, March 14, 2010

East Coast rainstorm needs a name

The fierce rainstorm that knocked down trees and power lines and flooded roads and neighborhoods on the East Coast this weekend was certainly one for the record books.
Our neighborhood in New Canaan, Conn., lost power Saturday night and we’re on our second night of a hotel vacation.
At its worst point, more than 60% of homes in the New Canaan area had no electricity.
Connecticut Light & Power reported that more than 120,000 customers were without power. (See stories in the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Hour and StamfordPlus.com)
Power in our neighborhood likely won’t be back on until Tuesday, three days after going out.
The CL&P website lists the top 10 storms it has dealt with by the number of customers who lost power. No. 10 is a wind and rainstorm from November 1995 that knocked out power for 167,000 CL&P customers, so this one might not make the cut by that standard.
What’s interesting to me is that a lot of those storms had names and not just hurricanes and tropical storms. I’m talking about Ice Storm Felix and Snowstorm Carl.
I think this storm deserves a name too. Given the ferocious winds, maybe we should name it after a blowhard politician.

Photos:
Top: Downed trees and power lines in Norwalk, Conn.

Bottom:
CL&P outage map from Sunday afternoon. New Canaan, Conn., is one of the dark blue sections in the southwest corner of the state.
CL&P historic storm response chart



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Wow, that was some storm.