Heavy Snow — Hartford, Connecticut

2011-10-29 to 2011-10-30 · Hartford, Connecticut

Event narrative

Six to seventeen inches of snow fell across Hartford County. Heavy wet snow fell on foliated trees, breaking branches and downing trees and wires, resulting in widespread power outages that lasted for up to 11 days. The Enfield DMV roof was compromised by the heavy snow and was shutdown. Both Avon and South Windsor have estimated 100,000 cubic yards of debris from fallen trees and power lines. The estimated cleanup costs across several towns in Hartford County is between $1.5 to $2.5 million. In addition, the Glastonbury Pheasant Farm lost more than 4,000 birds.

Wider weather episode

A rare and historic October Nor'easter brought very heavy snow to portions of southern New England on Saturday October 29. Low pressure tracked northeast from the North Carolina coast Saturday morning, rapidly strengthening as it passed well south of Nantucket Saturday evening. As the storm intensified, colder air from aloft was drawn into New England resulting in heavy snow in the interior.

Snowfall accumulations of one to two feet were common in the Monadnocks, Berkshires, Connecticut Valley, and higher elevations in central Massachusetts. Up to 31 inches of snow was reported at Jaffrey, New Hampshire and Plainfield, Massachusetts. Minor accumulations were even reported down to the south coast as the rain changed to a period of snow late Saturday night before ending. The accumulation of the heavy wet snow on trees and power lines resulted in widespread tree damage and power outages across many communities in central and western Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and northeastern Connecticut. This resulted in school closures and numerous towns cancelled or rescheduled Halloween and trick-or-treating activities. At the peak, 830,000 customers in Connecticut were without power. Throughout Connecticut, 164 AT&T cell phone towers were damaged resulting in degraded cell phone service until towers could be repaired and power restored.

Air travel in and around the Hartford area was disrupted when numerous flights were diverted to Bradley International Airport from the New York City metro area and then power outages affected the airport. Several airplanes were not able to allow their passengers to disembark for seven hours or more.

A motorist in Hebron died in a car accident believed to be the result of the weather conditions.

The precipitation started as mainly snow early Saturday afternoon across the interior of southern New England, although a brief period of rain at the onset was common across the lower elevations. Several hours of heavy snow occurred from mid afternoon through late evening on Saturday October 29. Snowfall rates reached 3 inches per hour for several hours in the Berkshires and Monadnocks as a nearly stationary band of heavy snow set up across this region. The snow tapered off just after midnight Saturday night in western New England with the last of the precipitation exiting eastern New England Sunday morning. This storm also brought damaging winds to Cape Cod and the islands with wind gusts up to 70 mph occurring early Sunday morning October 30 as well as minor to moderate coastal flooding to east coastal Massachusetts during the high tide early Sunday morning.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 350491. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.