A powerful pre-Christmas storm brought high winds of up to 60 mph, heavy rain and localized flooding around high tides in America’s oldest seaport and other Cape Ann communities Friday before temperatures plunged well below freezing Saturday morning.
Flooding took place in the run up to high tide Friday at 10:27 a.m. National Grid said Cape Ann and the Merrimack Valley were among the areas hardest hit by the storm. Outages were reported throughout Cape Ann, including major outages on Eastern Point early Friday morning and Magnolia on Friday afternoon.
Roughly 36 hours the storm swept across Massachusetts, thousands of National Grid employees on Saturday were focused on clean-up and restoration. At the peak of the storm, at around 8 p.m. Friday, nearly 60,000 customers experienced power outages.
More than 140,000 customers have had service restored since the storm began, with roughly 11,000 customers at 10 a.m. Saturday without power. National Grid said in a statement it had 2,000 personnel out responding to the outages, and additional crews have been shifted to Cape Ann.
The utility said more than 100 poles in the region were broken during the course of the storm, and with winds subsiding, “we will conduct helicopter inspections of certain transmission lines.”
National Grid expects the vast majority of customers affected by outages will have their power restored by Saturday night, while there will be some pockets without power into Sunday. Crews will continue to work until every customer’s power is restored.
The storm also caused flooding during high tide on Friday and in low-lying areas.
“We started to experience splash-over 1.5 hours before high tide along the Boulevard,” said Gloucester Public Works Director Mike Hale in an email Friday. The parking lot along Rogers Street known as I-4, C-2 “was wet,” Hale said. He added that Causeway Street was underwater an hour before high tide.
A portion of Stacy Boulevard from the Blynman Bridge toward the downtown was closed Friday afternoon. Waves could be seen crashing onto the boulevard.
Also closed was Causeway Street, which runs between Route 128 and Lobsta Land restaurant and Concord Street.
Kevin Barkhouse, the sales manager on Sudbay Chevrolet Buick Cadillac GMC on Causeway Street, said, “We’re fine. They just had to close the road for a little while.” He said just before 2 p.m. the road was again open and there were no issues otherwise.
One man took advantage of the flooding to row, row, row a boat gently down a parking lot Friday. Stefan Mierz shared a video and a photo taken by Jerry Lovasco of him rowing a dory around the parking lot at the former Madfish Grille restaurant at 77 Rocky Neck Ave., adjacent to Gloucester Marine Railways where his art studio is also located.
“Thankfully it managed to only get a little bit wet inside,” said Mierz in a message on Facebook Messenger. He was rowing around about 11:30 a.m.
“I needed to get it off the dock there anyway,” he said about having to move the dory. “I walked/floated it to the lot and rowed her in!”
Chef Barbara Lynch also showed pictures on her Instagram account of The Rudder restaurant on Rocky Neck, where water covered the deck. “Thankful for my cleanup crew, “she added.
Other people also shared their weather photos to social media. Cape Ann Weather shared a post showing debris on Thatcher Road at Good Harbor Beach. Others shared photos of waves crashing onto the beach parking lot or waves crashing at the Fishermen’s Memorial on Stacy Boulevard.
The Facebook page for the Rockport Town Administrator announced at high tide 10:30 a.m. that Thatcher Road, Route 127A, was closed due to flooding.
Around 11 a.m., the town announced that its Public Works crews were working to open roads “as soon as the water recedes and they can be cleared of debris.” Around noon, the town announced Thatcher had reopened to traffic.
The Essex Causeway carrying Route 133 over the Essex River flooded. It reopened Friday afternoon.
Some roads were covered with debris and rocks. Pounding waves were also seen on Gloucester’s Back Shore as well as some closures. A loader could be seen clearing rocks from the road in the area.
Manchester-by-the-Sea police said low-lying areas of town suffered flooding, including that Black Beach and Tuck’s Point were “completely flooded.” Water also came up behind Town Hall, police said.