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The outages came following a winter storm that brought freezing rain during the night of Thursday, Feb. 23, leaving trees and branches covered in a layer of ice on Friday morning, Feb. 24.
To make matters worse, the ice-covered branches were then battered by wind gusts of up to 46 mph, toppling branches and knocking down wires.
The combination of heavy wind and ice had left 7,666 Eversource customers without power as of around 11 a.m. on Friday.
United Illuminating customers fared better, with only 3 households affected.
Towns with the most outages include:
- Mansfield, with 1,215;
- Bolton, with 262;
- Coventry, with 525;
- Glastonbury, with 528;
- New Hartford, with 811;
- Stamford, with 727;
- Tolland, with 917.
Many of the outages happened in towns within Tolland, Hartford, and Litchfield Counties.
Several fire departments in the state also reported road closures resulting from downed trees and wires, including fire officials in Coventry and Tolland.
"Stay away from any downed wire!" Coventry Fire and EMS warned in a social media post on Friday.
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