Newtown awoke to a beautiful, but very cold, landscape Monday morning, January 21.

The first winter storm of 2019 may not have left as much snow on the ground as had been predicted, but ice and freezing temperatures that accompanied the January 20 weather event certainly made up for the precipitation that did not arrive. Sunshine on Monday sparkled off ice-covered branches across town, creating a beautiful scene in the dangerously cold temperatures that continued for a second day.

One day earlier, however, residents were dealing with dark skies, multiple road closures, and a growing number of homes and businesses without power. Branches, trees, and even utility poles crumbled under the weight of the freezing rain, creating additional danger on top of treacherous weather conditions.

At least one tree fell onto a home in Sandy Hook and another fell into the middle of the four-way intersection of Berkshire Road with Bennetts Bridge and Grays Plain. No injuries were caused by those incidents, nor in any of the dozens of additional tree and/or wires down incidents that first responders were sent to during the storm. At one point, three areas of Berkshire Road/State Route 34 were completely closed to through traffic. Dozens of secondary roads were also partially or fully closed during the storm and in its immediate aftermath.

By Sunday afternoon, Public Works crews were dealing “with a list of four pages of closed roads,” department Director Fred Hurley said this week. By that time, town employees had been working for 18-plus hours into what turned into a 24-hour work day. They had been called in, Mr Hurley said, at 7:30 Saturday evening. Precipitation began about an hour later, he reported.

That early start, he said, meant the town was ahead of the storm for much of its duration. Mr Hurley commended his crews for getting, and then staying, ahead of the worst.

“We got ahead of the storm, and they stayed on top of it,” he reported January 23. “They also performed extremely well, working with Eversource to get the roads open and to get the outage areas cleaned up so that they could get power restored to town.”

Planning for the storm really got underway, according to First Selectman Dan Rosenthal, last week.

“The Emergency Management Team got together on Thursday to get ahead of this, to create a game plan and scenarios, in case this turned out to be much worse,” Mr Rosenthal said. That team includes the first selectman, Emergency Management Director Bill Halstead, Disaster Recovery & Planning Coordinator Rob Sibley, Police Chief James Viadero, and Director of Emergency Communications Maureen Will.

Productive Overnight

The overnight hours of Sunday into Monday were productive for Eversource crews, who were able to knock the number of outages down from more than 2,000 to 659 by 7:30 am Monday. Twelve hours later, that number had been reduced significantly to 13 outages, Mr Rosenthal said. By Tuesday morning, he said, fewer than five homes were still without electricity.

“While I hesitate to use the word ‘lucky’ when nearly 2,400 people lose power, had we gotten more snow, this would have been much worse,” the first selectman said. “With snow added to that rain and ice, those numbers would have multiplied. I don’t think Eversource would have been able to handle it.

“We would have had to wait for people to come in from Michigan if the weather had been worse,” Mr Rosenthal said. “Even though we had people without power, it was localized. Power outages were not widespread across the state. I think Eversource was able to throw everything at it because this was a fairly localized issue.”

Frigid temperatures continued on Monday, leading the National Weather Service to issue a Wind Chill Advisory for much of the day. While town offices were not open on January 20 due to Martin Luther King, Jr, Day, the first selectman did open the town’s municipal center and senior center, inviting residents without power to take advantage of the locations as warming centers and charging stations.

The decision to not open shelters on Sunday, according to Mr Rosenthal, was made out of the interest of public safety.

“The concern was, with heavy ice and such cold, that getting people out of their homes, where they may not have cleared their walks, was not a good idea,” he explained. “A lot of times, even when the shelters are opened, people don’t actually come.

“We weren’t getting phone calls into dispatch or the police with people asking where to go or what to do,” he added. “There were none of those calls.”

Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members volunteered on Monday at the two warming centers. Very few people went to the senior center, Mr Rosenthal said, so that location closed at noon. The municipal center remained open all day.

“We knew Edmond Town Hall was open until 11 pm on Monday, so we made that an option,” Mr Rosenthal pointed out. A CodeRED on Monday alerted everyone to the availability of the former town building as a warming and charging center.

Like town and federal offices, public and parochial schools were already scheduled to be closed due to MLK, Jr, Day. Due to frigid Monday-Tuesday overnight temperatures, however, Superintendent of Schools Laurie Rodrigue delayed the start of school on Tuesday by two hours.

That delay was also advantageous for Public Works, who again began working early Tuesday morning.

“Because so much ice was still hanging, particularly on the conifers, there one of the big concerns was that a lot of ice was going to drop on the road after the fact,” said Fred Hurley. A partial town crew was called on to go out at 4 that morning, he said.

“They went out to make sure the buses were going to be safe and that rush hour went well,” he said.

“They didn’t find a lot, but they did sand up the icy spots around town. They were able to get done and out of the way before cars and buses moved.”

Mr Rosenthal also commended the town crews for their work during the storm, saying they did a “great” job keeping the roads open as much as they did.

The first selectman, who was less than pleased at the response by state crews during a November snow storm, sent some praise in that direction as well.

“I didn’t hear issues with our state roads this time,” he said. “I think the issues we had last time had more to do with it being an early season storm and catching them off guard.”

The timing of last weekend’s storm — arriving on a weekend night rather than during a work day rush hour, which was what happened two months ago — was better than in the previous storm, which also brought with it 8.2 inches of snow, sleet, and freezing rain. Less than a week after that storm, Mr Rosenthal called an apparent absence of state plows and contractors on major state roads in town at that time “unfortunate” and “uncharacteristic.”

“That other storm,” Mr Rosenthal said this week, “was a complete train wreck.

“It’s hard to opine on whether the state got lucky or got it right,” he continued. “But I didn’t hear issues this time, so I’ll give credit were it’s due.”