Dachshund puppies were the first warning of the severity of Tuesday’s storm for one Concord couple. David Afflick of Hillcrest Ave. in Concord had gone to the porch to check on his dogs’ barking.
“I love a good storm,” Afflick said. “I heard the craziness, the loudness the massive thunder. Like Armageddon, right?”
Afflick said the storm door of the porch had come unlatched and was smacking open and shut.
“The puppies were getting scared and David goes out to the porch,” said Seraphim Afflick, David’s wife. “I could hear the thunder but I didn’t realize the extent. So he’s trying to pull the door shut. The hail is coming in. And then you see a spark and then the tree comes right through our porch.”
David Afflick said he watched as a tree started to fall on a utility pole and the wires came flying off. It pulled the electrical unit off the neighbor’s house. He added that there was a small fire from the electrical sparks, but the heavy rain extinguished it before it could spread. A branch from the fallen tree hit the Afflick’s porch, but no people or pets were injured.
“Weiner dogs save the day,” Seraphim Afflick said.
About 1.2 inches of rain fell in Concord and Hopkinton, according to CoCoRaHS volunteers. Lesser amounts fell in bands to the north and south, with about three-quarters of an inch in Manchester and Franklin, and just a sprinkle along the N.H.-Massachusetts border and north of the Lakes Region. Hail also fell for a few minutes in the Concord area.
The pounding burst of rain, paired with thundershowers and strong winds, toppled trees and tore off branches, disrupting some road travel and damaging power lines. Weather Underground showed sustained wind speeds of about 15 to 18 mph with gusts nearing 30 mph.
Unitil “peaked with about 3,500 customers without power at approximately 6:15 p.m.,” said company spokesman Alec O’Meara. “That peak was short lived, however, as we were down to about 380 customers out by 7:30 p.m. thanks to some emergency switching around areas hit hard by the storm. Almost all outages on our system were specific to the city of Concord. Crews worked all night to restore to the rest, as we had a high volume of reports of downed trees and downed lines as a result of the storm, many of which were individual service issues.”
Concord Parks and Recreation reported on Facebook that staff would be working to clear debris from parks and cemeteries starting Wednesday. Large branches and trees toppled in several parks including Merrill Park. A resident shared that a metal bench was crushed by a tree at Rollins Park.