NEWBURYPORT — With winds reminiscent of “The Wizard of Oz” and heavy rain, this weekend’s nor’easter had countless local people holed up indoors as the storm raged on outside, leaving debris in its wake.
The much-discussed nor’easter rolled into the region this weekend, with winds reaching up to 47 miles per hour in Newburyport, and nearly 2 inches of rain being recorded in West Newbury as of Sunday, according to reports.
In Newburyport, Department of Public Services Director Kim Turner, said her team prepared for the storm ahead of time ensuring they had the staffing capability to tackle any potential issues.
“We had crews that were standing by the entire storm,” she said.
However, Turner said members of her department primarily dealt with a downed tree and tree limbs brought to the ground by high winds during the storm.
“We had one large tree come down on Fruit Street. We had another that we took down proactively on High Street because it was leaning, and then we had some large limbs that came down in some of the neighborhood areas,” she said.
The tree on Fruit Street came down on Saturday, damaging a car and wires, and the tree on High Street was removed on Sunday given large trucks were having difficulty passing underneath it, Turner added.
Turner also said while the downed tree on Fruit Street caused a power outage in the area, to her knowledge, no other areas of the city dealt with widespread power loss.
“I did not hear of a widespread power outage. There was a very localized power outage on Fruit Street when that tree came down, but as far as I understand it, the power was restored within the matter of a few hours,” she said.
Luckily, despite some of the aforementioned issues with trees, Turner said the storm was not nearly as bad as predicted, much to the delight of DPS workers.
“I think we were anticipating this was going to be a much larger storm than it was. I’m grateful that the extent of the damage was far less than what we were dreading actually,” she said.
Similarly, in Salisbury, Public Works Director Jamie Tuccolo said the town fared well during the storm.
“It wasn’t that bad for the town of Salisbury,” he said.
Tuccolo said while the DPW prepared accordingly for the nor’easter, they did not end up having to use the equipment they had prepped.
“What we did prior to the storm, which was on Thursday and Friday, is we checked all the chainsaws. We made sure everything was tight, made sure everything was sharpened. All the vehicles were fueled up and ready to go. We had all the barricades ready to go. But fortunately we didn’t need any of them,” he said.
While there was minor flooding from the ocean in the beach area and a few tree limbs on the roads, there were no road closures, major power outages or downed trees in town, according to Tuccolo.
“I would say that, for us at least, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” he said.
Phone calls to Amesbury’s department of public works and Newburyport’s harbormaster were not returned in time for this report.