High winds make for dangerous conditions; ski areas pause operations

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

UPDATE: 7 a.m. Wednesday Feb. 19 – Green Mountain Power is reporting no outages this morning.

The wind forecast for this morning arrived pretty much on schedule and with it came the power outages. By 6 a.m. Monday, Green Mountain Power’s online outage map was showing 1,180 customers without power – all of them in the southern part of Vermont. The totals have fluctuated through the morning, topping 1,200 and then falling back and rising again to 1,315 just after 7 a.m. By 8:30 a.m. the total had topped 1,700.

Hardest hit are the towns of Wilmington, which shows 490 customers in the dark,and Windham with 286.  Aside from Windham in our area, Grafton has the most outages with 60 followed by Andover with 15. Seven Weston customers are in the dark as is one customer in Rockingham.

No outages were reported in Cavendish, Baltimore, Chester, Springfield, Ludlow and Londonderry.

By 7:30, the town of Stratton was showing 219 customers out and Stratton Mountain was reporting “All lifts and trails are on a delay due to high winds and weather.” While Ludlow and Londonderry had not yet seen outages, the message was the same in those towns’ ski areas with both Okemo and Magic saying that skiers should expect delays, holds and closures. At 8 a.m. Magic said it may not be able to open chairlifts today.

The National Weather Service is saying that the high winds will last through 10 p.m. tonight with gusts of up to 60 miles per hour. Blowing and drifting snow will make driving hazardous.

On its website, Green Mountain Power is saying that it has outside crews in addition to its regular crews working today.