An October nor'easter-turned-into-a-massive snowstorm struck New England on Oct. 29 and 30, leaving between 10 and 16 inches of snow in Windham County, according to the National Weather Service. The Berkshires in Massachusetts got more than 2 feet, as did the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. Plainfield, Mass., was the snow champ, as that little town received 31 inches.
Leaves were still on the trees in many towns, and a couple of feet of wet, heavy snow on tree limbs resulted, predictably, in massive power outages across the Northeast.
Windham County experienced power outages, but nothing on the scale of what was seen in southern New England and elsewhere in the Northeast.
More that 3 million customers lost power from Maine to Maryland as a result of the storm. In Connecticut, approximately 831,000 customers lost power, more than the number that lost power during Tropical Storm Irene on Aug. 28.
So, while most Vermont homes had power back within a day, some places in Connecticut were still without electricity nearly two weeks after the snowstorm.
We don't know for certain if the utility companies in southern New England cut corners when it came to tree trimming or emergency planning, but we do know that our utility companies in Vermont are old hands when it comes to dealing with disasters.
Tropical Storm Irene was the worst-case scenario for Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS), the state's largest electric company. But the company was prepared for it.
According to CVPS, the company was already at high alert five days before the storm struck Vermont. When it became clear from the weather forecasts that Irene could cause significant damage, CVPS called out twice as many crews - some from as far away as Kansas and Missouri - than it usually does for big storms.
By the time the storm arrived on Aug. 28, the utility already had hundreds of line workers in place. But even with all the preparation, CVPS was confronted with unprecedented levels of damage, and road washouts made it difficult to access downed power lines.
In the aftermath of the storm, more than 73,000 CVPS customers were left without power. Yet within five days, CVPS restored service to 99 percent, all but 800 of those affected.
By comparison, Connecticut's electric utilities were slower in responding.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, by the fourth day following Irene, 443,000 of the 702,154 outages were restored, or about 63 percent. That was the lowest percentage of any state with outages from the hurricane-turned-tropical-storm.
In Connecticut's defense, the state suffered more tree damage in the October snowstorm than it did during Irene. But utility workers did not have to deal with the kind of infrastructure damage that Vermont's utilities faced after Irene.
And the utilities can't say that they weren't warned about the snowstorm.
National Weather Service forecasters began issuing winter storm warnings two days before the weather system arrived, and it was clear several days before the storm arrived that it would be a record breaker.
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Most of all, there's a big cultural difference between Vermont and Connecticut when it comes to power outages.
In Vermont, we expect to have the power go out for long stretches during bad weather. That's why many homes have gas ranges, wood stoves, and lots of lanterns, so we can avoid freezing in the dark during snow and ice storms. But we also expect that when we call in a power outage, it will get acted upon quickly.
By contrast, in Connecticut, both the utilities and their customers seem to get caught off guard by storms. Residents of that state don't seem to follow the lead of Vermonters who prepare for such outages as a matter of course.
We'll learn more about what actually happened if plans for investigations inConnecticut and Massachusetts into the power companies' restoration efforts come to pass.
But here in Vermont, we're secure in the knowledge that even a surprise snowstorm in October doesn't seem to faze our power companies.