Brighton Power Outage This Afternoon for Two Hours

Brighton experienced a power outage this afternoon for around two hours beginning shortly after 3 pm.

The NStar automatron over the phone referred to the impacted areas as "Brighton and surrounding communities." It clearly covered a large swath around Brighton Center, but I didn't start making calls around the neighborhood to hear the true extent. Post a comment [below] to indicate if you lost power, and what street you're on.

The automatron also said that power would be restored by "noon" (= tomorrow!) -- fortunately, that wasn't the case, as it was restored around 5:30 pm today.

My guess as to the cause? The rain last night followed by very wet snow is weighing down tree branches a lot. I've already seen one small tree bent over so much that part of it broke, and several shrubs of ours that are bent over all the way to the ground. A downed power line from a fallen branch or tree seems a likely cause, although the extent of the outage is larger than you'd expect for even a well-placed power line. (I'm sure that Rochester, NY residents will laugh, however, if we call this a borderline ice storm...)

When the power came on, I had just moved all our refrigerator perishable contents to our 40-mud room. It provides double-duty throughout the colder months as a large, walk-in refrigerator with somewhat variable temperature (usually close to 40 degrees fahrenheit, just like a refrigerator).

Will we get a sudden, mad rush for batteries and flashlights at local stores? I predict so.


UPDATE (11 pm): The Allston-Brighton TAB reports that 2,500 Brighton customers were without power for one-and-one-half hours-- more like two-and-one-quarter by my watch -- and that the problems wasn't tree limbs downing power lines, but rather excessive water in an underground cabling system.