The Welcome to Henderson Sign iced over from the nasty Wednesday, March 19th blizzard!
It was a doozy yesterday for residents of Henderson and the surrounding areas when a predicted storm dumped heavy, wet snow with strong winds gusting to 70 MPH. Residents in Henderson lost power about 6 a.m. Wednesday morning, with blizzard conditions outside. The Interstate was closed from Lincoln to Lexington, and school, of course, was called off again—it was going to be a long day!
Henderson’s electricity provider, Perennial Public Power, assured customers on its Facebook page that it was trying to get the downed power lines and utilities up and running. They began their efforts at 4 a.m. Wednesday, but the road conditions were hampering their efforts. During the day, they provided an updated outage map but said work would end by 10 p.m. so their workers could rest.
Perennial reported that by 5 p.m., 80% of its customers were still without power. Fortunately, the outside temperature hovered above 30 degrees for most of the day, but it was predicted to reach a low of 18 degrees Wednesday night. Internet was spotty and slow in Henderson during the outage.
If you tried snow removal on Wednesday, it wasn’t easy. It was so heavy, wet, and iced over that a snow blower couldn’t do the job. The City managed to clear the main roads, but side streets were single-lane, and many of the driveways were blocked with large boulders of snow.
Tree damage is very heavy across town, with many downed limbs and split trees. Moving the heavily drifted and iced-over snow was a struggle, even with a four-wheeler with a blade. Because of the drifting, it was hard to tell how much snow Henderson received, but over 5 inches would be a good guess.
After sunset, a drive around Henderson was quite eerie. It appeared that nobody was home except for the occasional dim glow of a flashlight in a window. We counted only three homes in Henderson, all lit up, apparently because they had installed an automatic standby generator. Many folks had their vehicles in the driveway running and were probably charging devices like we were. Smaller generators could also be heard and seen running outside of garages around town.
Despite the storm, a beautiful sunset could be seen west of town across Lakeview Park.
The City of Henderson lit up at 10:28 p.m. What a relief for everyone, thanks to the tireless workers at Perennial! Like many residents who had finally given up on power returning, we packed our perishables in coolers and set them outside. With refrigerators humming again, we hauled everything back in for the night.
On Henderson side streets, there was only a single lane, and on Main Street, large amounts of snow still needed to be removed on Thursday morning. Heartland Community Schools had to call off school on Thursday due to the power outages and road conditions.
