Those who have school-age children and enjoy making predictions on when there will be a snow day closure may have taken particular satisfaction in this Friday Snow Day (two weeks ago Thursday was a snow day as well). Yesterday (Thursday) was predicted to rain all day, with temperatures dropping overnight, leading to pelting freezing rain for the entire Friday. The Beacon City School District (BCSD) called the snow day Thursday evening, with a reminder Friday morning.

Horrors! Ice froze trash cans shut. Parked cars were sealed in a shell of ice.

Beacon was covered in ice. No school bus would be out in it. Dutchess County public transportation was running, and Beacon’s Post Office workers were once again out in their snow gear delivering the mail by hand. All Sport in Fishkill announced a delayed opening, and then an early closure. The Family Justice Center in Newburgh announced a delayed opening for 11am, and then gave up and told employees to work remote.

Anyone who didn’t get their piles of snow from the street or corners saw it frozen back into place as the sleet covered it in freeze mode. Central Hudson kept customers informed by email, Twitter and Instagram, showing footage of iced-over trees completely falling over under the weight of the ice, snapping power lines as they went.

Central Hudson posted photos of fallen trees. Here is a video of trees falling.
*Photo Credit:* *Central Hudson*

According to Central Hudson: “Locally, as of 8:30 a.m. on Friday, approximately 31,000 Central Hudson customers were without power with the majority of outages located in Ulster County. With sleet, freezing rain and wintry weather are expected to continue into the afternoon, additional outages are expected to occur during the day. Restoration activities are expected to extend into Saturday and possibly Sunday.”

This number rose to 50,550 homes without power by the afternoon. ALBB’s own Program Manager, Teslie Andrade, was without power in Newburgh until 4:30pm. Mutual aid was requested from Indiana, northern Pennsylvania and upstate New York to arrive to assist, with more possibly on the way. In total, Central Hudson expects to have a field force of more than 400 line and tree professionals.

With freezing conditions, pipes in homes are bound to freeze and then could burst, causing a big, expensive mess. People are encouraged to drip their faucets if they lose power, run out of oil to heat their homes, or generally risk an area being too cold to insulate the pipes.

Central Hudson tweeted tips today on how to prevent freezing pipes.