1

GORDON DANIELS

A fallen tree lies across three vehicles at 87 Prospect St. in Northampton.

2

KEVIN GUTTING

Reilly Osborne, center, pursues his brother in retaliation for a thrown snowball while their mother, Kathy Osborne, left, clears slush from a drain on Washington Place. Their dog, Dehli, takes in the view from the front yard.

3

GORDON DANIELS

Northampton police had to close North Maple Street in Florence so Comcast personnel could repair fallen lines near the Bridge Road intersection.

4

GORDON DANIELS

Northampton firefighters Dennis Nazzaro, center, and Capt. Shawn Denkiewicz, right, place cones near a downed electric line that had ripped free from a house. Firefighters were kept busy during the night and all day Wednesday investigating downed lines. Most were telephone and cable lines.

5

KEVIN GUTTING

Reilly Osborne, left, 8, receives a direct snowball hit from his brother, Patrick, 10, as they play near the snow forts they built in the front yard of their Northampton home Wednesday morning. Their dog, Dehli, a 5-year-old Bouvier, stays clear of the action.

6

GORDON DANIELS

John Dahl, of South Main Street, Florence, left, snowblows his sidewalk while a PVTA bus is being pulled out by a company truck.

7

GORDON DANIELS

On Jackson Street, Heather Wieler, right, a student teacher at Jackson Street Elementary School in Northampton, heads to the school on her cross country skis, before she found out it was closed for the day.

NORTHAMPTON - Fallout from Wednesday's shifting precipitation included closed schools, homes and businesses without power, flooded streets, damaged vehicles and backs made to ache from shoveling the miserable stuff.

As heavy, wet snow and the soaking rain that follow it brought down tree limbs and power lines, more than 14,000 Western Massachusetts Electric Co. customers lost power, almost half of them in Hampshire County. Power to some customers may not be restored until today, a spokeswoman said.

Power failures in Hampshire County towns covered by National Grid - including Northampton, Williamsburg, Belchertown and Granby - peaked about 10:30 a.m. at 3,500 customers, according to a spokeswoman. Power was restored to most of the customers by midafternoon.

Toppling trees led police in Deerfield and Sunderland to close some roads and declare a state of emergency through the morning and afternoon. The declaration amounted to a request for residents to stay off the roads in order to give plows time to clear them.

"The snow is like wet concrete, and this makes it more difficult" to restore power, said WMECO spokeswoman Lacey Ryan. "We understand the frustration of customers. We're working as quickly and safely as we can. We appreciate people's patience."

The University of Massachusetts was closed for most of Wednesday, but reopened for classes at 5:30 p.m.

For some, Wednesday's weather recalled the ice storm of December 2008, which knocked out power to whole towns for days.

"People are a little nervous," said Shutesbury Police Chief Thomas Harding. "The ice storm is still fresh in their memory, but we haven't had any accidents and we haven't lost any power."

The heavy snow, combined with aging equipment, disabled seven of Northampton's plows and sanders, said Public Works Director Ned Huntley. He said road cleanup was further slowed by clogged storm drains causing flooding and the number of downed tree limbs, which had to be cleared away by public works crews and firefighters.

Northampton Police ordered 23 vehicles towed from city streets early Wednesday morning to make way for the plows. The citywide snow emergency and parking ban was expected to continue at least through Thursday morning.

Police took numerous reports from across the city of power lines and tree limbs brought down by the heavy, wet snow, said Capt. Scott Savino. On Prospect Street, one tree limb fell across three cars parked in a rear driveway, he said.

Building Commissioner Anthony Patillo said the weight of the snow caused one structure to collapse - a Northern Avenue garage already heavily damaged by an arson fire Dec. 27. Patillo urged homeowners to clear any accumulation over a foot using roof rakes, which can be found at most hardware stores.

The storm took its toll on business: much of Northampton's King Street commercial corridor was without power Wednesday morning, Huntley said.

Widespread loss of power

Power was out plenty of other places as well.

Employees at Atkins Farms Country Market in Amherst used hand-held calculators to total up purchases for more than four hours because the business had no electricity, said manager David Thornton. He said staff put some of the store's perishables in a refrigerated truck during the outage.

"There weren't many customers, but they were understanding and appreciative that we could handle them all," he said.

Nearby at Hampshire College, the financial aid, admissions and human resources offices, and the farm center, went without power because of the same outage. Most of the main campus had power, said spokesman Larry Archey.

About 550 WMECO customers in Amherst and Hadley lost power, far fewer than in other towns. Most of Amherst's power was back on by 2 p.m. Wednesday.

There were numerous reports of downed trees in Amherst. Betty Brace of Shays Street was in bed at 6:15 a.m. when a tree on her neighbor's property fell.

"I heard this 'whack!' and it was enough to make me curious," she said. "So I looked out my window and saw a big tree, about 15 inches in diameter, that fell right across Shays." Later, a woman in a pickup truck got out and pulled branches out of the way, then went around the downed tree, driving on a lawn, she said.

Hilltown emergency personnel scrambled to clear roads of the heavy snow and trees and power lines brought down in the storm.

In Goshen, firefighters responded to a motor vehicle accident on Route 9 at 5:45 p.m. on Tuesday. Fire Chief Susan Labrie said that a vehicle slid off the road, and both occupants of the vehicle were transported by ambulance to Cooley Dickinson Hospital.

At noon on Wednesday, Labrie said the department's main concern was trees and power lines going down. The fire station was without power due to generator problems, so the station could not receive radio calls, Labrie said.

In Westhampton, downed trees and wires caused a blackout in the northwest part of town, said Highway Superintendent David Blakesley. By noon Wednesday, many residents were still without power.

Two car fires also occurred on Route 66 and North Road Wednesday morning. The reason the two vehicles caught fire is undetermined. Blakesley said the car on North Road was a total loss because of the extent of the damage.

In Sunderland, downed trees closed Old Amherst Road and Route 47 for six and five hours respectively, said Police Chief Jeffrey Gilbert. He first received a call of downed trees at 5:30 a.m.

Across the Connecticut River in Deerfield, the trouble began at 6:15 a.m. when a live electrical wire came down across routes 5 and 10 just south of the Wok restaurant. The road was closed for just over a half-hour while a Western Massachusetts Electric Co. crew fixed the line, said Deerfield Police Chief Michael Wozniakewicz. He said extra officers were called to duty to respond to the increased call volume.

Other storm troubles

In Easthampton, eight car accidents were reported, power lines came down on 37 streets and six transformers blew, according to Police Capt. Donald Emerson. A four-vehicle accident on Mountain Road at 9:12 p.m. "started the night off," Emerson said. In that accident, four people in one vehicle were transported to Holyoke Medical Center, where they were treated and released, according to a hospital spokesman.

Between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., transformers blew on Main Street, John Street, East Streets and Truehart Drive, causing power outages.

There were seven car accidents involving two-car collisions and one in which a car went off the road and struck a pole on Plain Street, according to police. Most of the power and telephone lines went down due to fallen branches, police said.

Pomeroy Street was closed Wednesday morning after live wires fell from a utility pole, police said, while Mountain Road closed after the accident involving four vehicles at around 9 p.m. Tuesday, according to police.

Easthampton Police called in two additional officers for shifts Tuesday night and Wednesday, Emerson said.

"This storm is right up there with the worst," Emerson said. "We haven't had any major ones for a while. It's very bad."

In Southampton, 70 percent of the town was without power for part of the day Wednesday, and about 25 people sought shelter at Town Hall, where heat, light and food were provided, according to Police Officer Scott Gove.

"Most of the town is without power," said Roger Baol, Highway Department foreman. "Power lines are down all over. I think almost every street in town's got tree branches or power lines down."

White Loaf Road was the only road reported closed Wednesday. It was closed due to fallen tree branches, Gove reported.

The numbers

Ryan, of WMECO, said more than 100 electrical repair crews, half of them from Connecticut Light & Power, were working to restore power, but it was slow going. It was likely that some places won't have power restored until today, she said.

One problem crews are facing is that the outages are highly localized, she said. "We're working with 400 trouble spots," she said. "We don't fix one and a whole town comes on."

Hatfield was the hardest-hit town in Hampshire County, with virtually all power knocked out. As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, 1,456 of 1,775 Hatfield customers were still without power.

There were 6,963 WMECO customers without power at 9 a.m. Wednesday. Southampton was hit almost as hard as Hatfield, with 1,938 of 2,401 customers losing power. Out of 8,072 customers in Easthampton, 2,200 lost power.

In Franklin County, Deerfield had 619 outages, Sunderland had 155 and Leverett had 158 as of 9 a.m. Most of Conway was without power throughout the day.

Around the same time, National Grid reported 3,390 customers without power in Hampshire County, including nearly 2,400 in Northampton and 700 in Granby.

Staff writers Catherine Baum and Ben Storrow contributed to this report.