Community Corner

Stonington Braces for Winter Storm

Shoreline could see total accumulation of more than 16-inches of snow.

Town officials and residents spent much of the day on Thursday preparing for Nemo.

The powerful winter storm is expected to last in to Saturday morning and could bring more than 16-inches of snow to the shoreline.

Stonington First Selectman Edward Haberek Jr., urged residents to take precautions and said town hall will close at noon, today, to provide employees with enough travel time to return to their homes before the worst of the storm hits. If the weather conditions deteriorate faster than expected town hall could close earlier and an announcement of the closure will be made on the on town hall main number by 7 a.m., Friday.

Find out what's happening in Stonington-Mysticwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Haberek was also asking residents with a trash pick-up day of Friday to place their trash outside as early as possible in an effort to speed up trash pick-up.

The first selectman said he would post town updates on his blog and on his Patch blog.

Find out what's happening in Stonington-Mysticwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The Stonington Office of Emergency Management sent out a number of storm safety tips to residents on Thursday and urged residents to avoid traveling during the storm.

Stonington Public Schools, Pine Point School and St. Michael's School cancelled school and all activities. The Mystic & Noank Library will be closed on Friday and Saturday and the Mystic Aquarium will close at 1 p.m., today. Governor Dannel P. Malloy has said that all nonessential state employees should not report to work on Friday. Post what's closed and what's open here.

And the Stonington Police Department issued a reminder of the snow-parking ban. According to town ordinance vehicles must be removed from roads when there is more than two-inches of snow on the ground. Stonington Borough residents should remove all vehicles from Water Street and vehicles on Elm and Main street should only be parked on the even or odd side of the street depending on if it is an odd or even day. Stonington Police Captain Jerry Desmond said the ban would be in effect by this afternoon.

Connecticut Light & Power also spent much of the day on Thursday preparing for the storm.

Mitch Gross, CL&P's spokesman said his utility has issued an "all hands on deck" alert to its workers, is holding meetings throughout the today with workers and expect to have "hundreds and hundreds" of line and tree workers on duty to deal with outages that could occur this weekend.

Gross, however, cautioned that crews will not be able to restore power during the storm or when the winds are high because of the dangers that could create.

"Our line workers and tree workers will be out there as long as it's safe," he added.

Here is the forecast from the National Weather Service as of 4:30 a.m., Friday:

Today: Snow. High near 37. Windy, with a northeast wind 15 to 20 mph increasing to 23 to 28 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 55 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100 percent. Total daytime snow accumulation of 4 to 8 inches possible.
 

Tonight: Snow. The snow could be heavy at times. Low around 22. Windy, with a northeast wind 32 to 38 mph, with gusts as high as 60 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100 percent. New snow accumulation of 11 to 17 inches possible.

Saturday: Snow, mainly before noon. High near 28. Windy, with a north wind 26 to 31 mph, with gusts as high as 55 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 5 inches possible.
Saturday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 12. Wind chill values as low as -2. Blustery, with a north wind 14 to 22 mph, with gusts as high as 33 mph.

Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 32. Northwest wind 9 to 13 mph.



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