Light At The End Of The Tunnel For Merrimack Valley Residents

Residents in Andover, North Andover and Tewksbury got some good news and some bad news on Tuesday. The good news is that National Grid finally published an estimate for when power service would be fully restored to those three towns. The bad news is that estimate is 11:45 pm on Thursday night.

The estimates were published on National Grid's power outage map and it was the first time the utility had given an estimate for when work on fixing downed power lines would be completed. Keep in mind, those are estimates and not guarantees. But there seems to be a good chance power will be restored before then, as crews seem to have made steady progress in the towns over the course of the day. By 3:30 pm Tuesday:

• There were 4,751 customers without power, down from 9,167 early this morning.
• North Andover remained the hardest hit -- and darkest -- of the three towns with 6.427 customers still waiting for the lights to come back on. That's slightly better than this morning, when 7,249 of the 12,560 National Grid customers in North Andover were in the dark.
• And in Tewksbury, 1,682 customers were still waiting for electricity to be restored, down from the 2,591 of National Grid'ss 12,774 Tewksbury customers that didn't have power when they woke up this morning.

That's little consolation for the people in those towns that are still without power. Parents in Tewksbury took to social media complaining that it was tough to send kids to school on Tuesday when they hadn't been able to take hot showers and didn't have light to do homework. All three towns have postponed trick-or-treating until later in the week, and schools were closed for a second straight day in Andover and North Andover on Tuesday. The new trick-or-treating days are:

• Sunday, 4-7 pm in Andover.
• Saturday, 5:30-7:30 pm in North Andover.
• Friday, 6-8 pm in Tewksbury.

National Grid said that 33 high-tension transmission lines that run through the Merrimack Valley were knocked down in the overnight storm from Sunday into Monday, which is why so many communities in the region were hit so hard by the storm. The work to repair the transmission wires is estimated to take 72 hours. While the restoration of the transmission lines restores service to the largest number of customers, National Grid will have to follow that work with the piecemeal work of repairing the delivery wires that run through towns and neighborhoods.

Crews in Merrimack Valley towns are still working to clear storm debris from roadways. Dozens of roads and intersections remain closed, and some traffic signals remain dark. There is also the possibility that some downed wires may still be unreported. Downed lines should be reported immediately to National Grid and to your local police department. For questions related to power outages or electricity, contact National Grid at 1-800-465-1212.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).