(WBEN) - Crews for utility companies have been working since yesterday to keep the lights on, but there's plenty of reasons why restoration is taking longer than usual with this storm.
Both National Grid and NYSEG report the vast majority of outages were restored as of Tuesday morning, though there was a lot to deal with when the storm was at its strongest.
"The big challenge with any of these storms is the crews have to exercise a lot of caution," said NYSEG Spokesperson Mike Baggerman. "They can't go up in those bucket trucks when the wind is 40 miles per hour or more, so as we know yesterday winds were 50, 70 miles per hour."
Baggerman credited the crews in the field for their ability to work in those conditions.
Why are some areas seeing restoration quicker than others?
"It depends on the extent of damage," said Ken Kujawa, National Grid Spokesperson. "We had a lot of trees come down yesterday. We have to get forestry crews out to cut those trees down, we have to remove the trees, and then we have to see what the level of damage is that was caused."
"The biggest challenge that we have is when we have broken poles," Kujawa said. "Replacing those and transferring all the facilities on to the new poles is a very time consuming process."
Kujawa said there is a possibility restoration goes into Wednesday.