Thunderstorm Wind Knocked Out Power to More than 1,000

More than a thousand electric customers in Hamilton lost power on Friday night when a tree branch came down on power lines on Essex Street.

At the height of the outage, National Grid said that 1,263 of its 3,071 electric customers in Hamilton were without power. Another 35 customers were out in Wenham. In all, 1,900 customers – also including those in Beverly and Essex – were without power, said National Grid spokeswoman Debbie Drew.

The outage, which occurred at about 9:15 p.m. as a thunderstorm rolled through the area, generally extended from the area of easterly towards Essex Street, said Lt. Joe Allen.

Firefighters were called to the area of 589 Essex St, where a tree came down on the wires. National Grid crews responded within a half hour.

“The area where they were working had a branch on the primaries,” Allen said.

Power was back to all customers by 11 p.m. and most customers had their power back at about 10:15 p.m., Drew said.

A tree also came down across electric wires on Chebacco Road, near Beck’s Pond in Hamilton. The trees and wires were intertwined and completely blocked Chebacco Road. The Manchester-by-the-Sea Police and Fire Departments had to be notified in case any call came in on the opposite side of the fallen tree.

On Friday night, a tree also fell across Cherry Street in Wenham. No power outages were reported in that area.

Allen said there had been no wind related problems during the day on Saturday, as of noon.

The wind gusted as high as 43 miles per hour on Saturday morning at the weather station at the Ipswich fire station, the closest public weather station to Hamilton.