Heavy Snow — Eastern Hampden, Massachusetts

2011-10-29 to 2011-10-30 · Eastern Hampden, Massachusetts

Event narrative

Fourteen to fifteen inches of snow fell across eastern Hampden County. Heavy wet snow fell on foliated trees, breaking branches and downing trees and wires, resulting in widespread power outages. Many emergency shelters were opened for residents without power and by Monday, there were lines at all open gas stations. Area public schools were closed for 5 to 6 days. Springfield estimated there were 50,000 cubic yards of tree damage in town. The snowstorm destroyed the town of Palmers 100 year old fire alarm box. Several towns have estimated costs of over $2 million in cleanup. An Amtrak train bound for Boston from Chicago was stopped near Palmer by a rockslide blocking the tracks. Forty-eight passengers were stuck on the train and were later bussed to their destinations.

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, 665,000 customers in Massachusetts were without power. Seventy-seven shelters were opened and sheltered over 2000 residents across the state. All shelters were closed by the evening of November 6th. A state of emergency was declared by Governor Patrick on October 29th and he declared an end to the state of emergency on November 6th.

Six fatalities occurred during and in the aftermath of the storm. They are not included in the Storm Data statistics due to their very indirect nature. Further descriptions of these fatalities are as follows:

Four people died from carbon monoxide poisoning from improperly ventilated generators, including a 47 year old Worcester man and a 49 year old Hatfield woman.

A Lunenberg resident died in a fire.

A 20 year old Springfield man died after walking into an area of downed power lines and stepping on or touching an electrified metal guardrail.

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 350502. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.