Thundersnow, driving wind, heavy snow close schools, offices again
By Mike McGann, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com
Heavy snow weighs down tree branches after a storm dumped nearly a foot of snow on the Unionville area, Thursday.
While the warm-up act carried quite a punch, the headliner stole the show.
As Unionville took a deep breath and recovered from clearing some four inches of “surprise” snow that fell Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, closing schools, it was understood that part two of the storm would be the big one. And so it was, with thunder, snow fall at three inches an hour during the storm’s peak, some 10 inches fell across the the area, clogging roads and closing Unionville-Chadds Ford schools for the fourth time in less than two weeks.
As the heaviest storm of 2011 so far, the heavy snowfall — both in terms of amount and weight of the moist snow, weighing down tree limbs and power lines — caused the Chester County Department of Emergency Services to ask motorists to stay off county roads Thursday morning as road crew worked feverishly to clear snow and downed branches from area roads.All Chester County offices were closed, as were a number of local business offices.
PECO reported thousands of customers without power, the worst concentration of outages being in southern Chester County — including chunks of East Marlborough, causing power to be out in the area of Unionville High School.
We’ll be updating the story during the day, but you can send us your snow pictures to snow@unionvilletimes.com and we’ll post them.
Update: 3:30 p.m. PECO says it now has restored power to most homes in the Unionville area. Downed trees and tree limbs remain a problem, though, as local towns work to clear roads.
