Windy conditions on Wednesday night knocked down trees and power lines in several spots across the region, leaving scattered power outages still in effect on Thursday morning.
Windy conditions overnight continued into the morning, resulting in the National Weather Service putting out a red flag warning, which warns against the potential for rapid fire growth and spread for Hillsborough and Cheshire County, as well as to other New Hampshire communities.
The warning was posted in the early hours of the morning on Thursday, warning that a post-frontal air mass is expected to combine with gusts from the northwest. Winds are expected to blow from the west at 10 to 20 miles per hour, with gusts up to 40 miles per hour or more at times. The combination will increase the potential danger that wildfires in areas, which without snow cover could spread.
The red flag warning will be in effect from 9 a.m. on Thursday through 8 p.m.
Though about 500 New Hampshire residents were still without power as of 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, most were small-scale outages impacting five residents or less across the state, according to Eversource’s outage maps.
On Thursday morning, Greenfield was reporting fewer than two outages, Hancock fewer than five and Rindge had seven customers without power.
Fire crews were out in force in the overnight hours, with crews responding to reports of trees or wires town in Rindge, Jaffrey, Peterborough, Bennington and Dublin.
North Bennington Road was shut down for several hours on Wednesday night due to several trees and wires down, Bennington Fire Department posted on its Facebook page. The wires caused a small brush fire, which was extinguished by the fire department.