Elsa was no Isaias, but the tropical storm that swept through Connecticut Friday made its mark.
A peak of about 13,000 Eversource customers lost power, fewer than the number of outages from heavy thunderstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday.
"We've had an incredible amount of thunderstorms," says Eversource President of Regional Electric Operations Craig Hallstrom. "The crews have been out every night working to restore those customers, and at the same time getting ready for this storm."
As of 9:20 pm Friday night, Eversource showed 1,331 customers without power. United Illuminating, which covers less territory than its counterpart, was showing no significant outages.
Last August, Tropical Storm Isaias famously wiped out power for hundreds of thousands, some for more than a week.
Tropical Storm Elsa will be remembered in Connecticut mostly for heavy rain and resulting floodwaters, especially in the southwestern part of the state. Stamford received more than five inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service.
"I think we've all seen the significant amount of flooding that's taken place," says Nolan, "but fortunately, it's spared us significant damage."
Friday night, state environmental and health officials advised against recreational water contact and swimming over the next 48 hours" in the Quinnipiac River and "within and in close proximity to Bridgeport, Hartford, Wallingford, Norwalk, Norwich, and the greater New Haven area, which areas have experienced discharges of untreated sewage."
In West Haven on Friday morning, there was a small landslide in the heavily saturated earth under a Metro-North track, forcing trains to switch to another track for a few hours. Gov. Ned Lamont and Sen. Richard Blumenthal later appeared at the scene, citing the incident as an example of the nation's failing infrastructure.
"I'm very hopeful that we'll have support from my colleagues," says Blumenthal, "and that we'll use this storm as a lesson in the need for infrastructure investment and resilience."