Updated: Thursday thunderstorm knocks power out to majority of Rochester residents

ROCHESTER — On Thursday, July 3 a brief but powerful thunderstorm left more than 45,000 people across the state without power, including nearly two-thirds of Rochester residents.

The storm, which blew through Rochester around 7:45 p.m. brought with it wind speeds up to 35 miles per hour and gusts up to 56 miles per hour, according to Weather Underground, which gets its data from the New Bedford Regional Airport Station.

The storm, which lasted for about half an hour, downed trees and power lines that blocked off nearly every major road, the Rochester Fire Department said.

According to Highway Surveyor Jeffrey Eldridge, road closures and outages across Rochester were caused by fallen trees, tree limbs and wires.

Eldridge said the majority of damage and road blocks occurred “right through the middle of town.”

The Rochester Fire Department said that by sunup on Friday, July 4, all major roads were cleared of storm debris and made passable.

Eldridge said that between the highway and fire departments, about 25 people worked to clear the roads and make them passable.

“Fire and highway crews were out in excess of 48 hours all weekend long clearing trees,” said Town Administrator Cameron Durant.

Eversource and its partner utility companies came from out of state to help restore power, according to the Rochester Police Department.

Durant noted that the storm caused damage to people’s properties and homes, as well as the fire chief's vehicle and the highway surveyor’s vehicle.

“It was an incredible effort between our police, fire, highway department and facilities department to clean up the town,” he said.

The Thursday night storm had come quickly, with wind speeds picking up from 7 miles per hour at 6:53 p.m. to 33 miles per hour at 7:43 p.m., according to Weather Underground.

According to Durant, Emergency Management Director Paul Ciaburri said the amount of damage caused by the storm was comparable to the damage caused by Hurricane Bob in 1991.

He noted anecdotally that people were saying they felt like the storm “was like a microburst or a mini tornado to some capacity because of the amount of damage, how quickly it came and the way the trees were going in certain directions.”

At 12:05 p.m. on Friday, July 4, 2,175 Eversource customers were still without power, with 14 outages reported. Over 1,000 residents had been without power near Burgess Avenue, 768 residents didn’t have power along New Bedford Road and nearly 400 were without power near Snipatuit Road at this time.

By 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 5 all outages caused by the storm had been restored, according to the Eversource outage map.

Rochester residents can dispose of logs and brush at the Pine Street Fairgrounds and should use the Andrew Burke Lane entrance for access. Logs and brush should also be separated.