Storm rolls through CT, knocks out power

(WTNH) - Wednesday night's storm had a little bit of everything, snow, rain, thunder, and some strong wind gusts.

At it's peak, CL&P reported that around 20,000 customers lost power as a result of Wednesday night's storm. More than 1/3rd of residents in Montville and Killingworth had no power.

In Portland, wind brought down trees on things other than power lines.

One Portland neighborhood is still cleaning up from the autumn nor'easter, but now they have more clean-up ahead of them. One landlord has a whole new problem to worry about.

A big, old tree came right out of the ground thanks to the high wind and heavy rain.

"I was asleep and heard a really, really loud bang, and I ran into my kids room, because if it had gone the other way, it would have hit their bedrooms," said Kelly Randazzo.

Instead, the tree smashed through the garage behind a multi family house on Main Street. It missed Randazzo's second floor apartment, but it cracked the windshield of her car.

The storm also brought down power lines. Horse Pond Road in Madison was closed because a tree branch fell on power lines with enough force to snap the tops off of utility poles.
   
Back in Portland, Randazzo's landlord has his hands full too. The smashed garage was full of doors, hardware and appliances for the several properties he owns in Portland. It was only last week he finished cleaning up from October's nor'easter.

"I mean this place looked like a war zone after the last storm, so I'm hoping this isn't a preview of what's going to happen all winter," said Randazzo.

As a result of the damage, CL&P opened its Emergency Operations Center in Berlin.

In a statement, CL&P said that they had over 500 line and tree crews pre-staged across the state.

Wind gusts of up to forty miles an hour hit the state, ratting windows and sending debris into the streets. There was a 56 mph wind gust at Groton-New London.

In Rhode Island, one wind gust was clocked at 79 miles per hour.

If all the rain that fell overnight had been snow, Connecticut could have seen 20-30 inches accumulate, said Storm Team 8 Meteorologist Gil Simmons.