WEST LEBANON — Thousands of Upper Valley residents remained without electricity heading into Saturday evening, as utility crews across New Hampshire and Vermont continued to address widespread power outages that resulted from the recent snowstorm.

A combination of heavy snow and fallen trees resulted in downed power lines across the Upper Valley, with most reported outages occurring between early Friday evening into Saturday morning.

In Vermont, approximately one-third of Green Mountain Power’s statewide outages were in Upper Valley towns, according to the utility’s outage map on Saturday. Hartford was the largest affected Vermont town, with more than 5,700 customer outages as of 1 p.m.

As of 4 p.m., over 12,000 customers in Upper Valley Vermont towns remained without electricity, including 1,400 outages in Thetford, 1,200 in Norwich and 1,242 in Hartland.

In New Hampshire, over 5% of New Hampshire customers served by Eversource and Liberty utility companies remained without power as of 4 p.m. New Hampshire Electric Co-op, with 82,823 customers statewide, had 10% of customers without electricity.

Many New Hampshire communities in the Upper Valley averaged between 700 and 1,000 homes or businesses without power as of 4 p.m., including Lebanon, Hanover, Claremont, Canaan and Lyme.

Some police departments, including Canaan and Lebanon, posted messages on social media, including their Facebook pages, for residents in need of assistance due to prolonged power loss.

The Canaan Police Department is encouraging residents to do welfare checks on their neighbors and to call the department at 603-523-7400 in case of an emergency. The town also opened a warming shelter at the police station at 52 Route 118.

The Lebanon Police Department announced around 5 p.m. that a warming shelter at Lebanon Middle School at 3 Moulton Ave., that had opened earlier in the afternoon, had closed for the remainder of Saturday. Residents in need of assistance may contact the city emergency operations center at 603-448-0917.

The Valley News contacted the Lebanon Police Department, but available personnel said they did not know the reason for the shelter’s closure.

Patrick Adrian may be reached at 603-727-3216 or at padrian@vnews.com.

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