Wind Whips Granville

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Despite more than 24 hours of high winds last week, Granville managed to avoid serious property damage while authorities and residents were kept busy cleaning up debris. No injuries were reported as a result of the high winds on Dec. 1.

Granville village police said they were busy for a few hours when the winds seemed to reach their peak during the afternoon of Dec. 1.

“There was a busy little window when that storm blew through where we were running from call to call to call around 3 p.m.,” Sgt. Dave Williams said. 

Williams said he responded to a number of minor incidents with the most serious occurring across Rathbun Avenue from the Pember Library and Museum.

A motorist parked along the sidewalk avoided injury when his vehicle was struck by debris blown off a nearby building. A number of bricks and a roll of roofing paper came off the building at 25 W. Main St. and struck the top of a car, shattering the sunroof. 

No one was hurt in the incident, but police said the driver had just put the car on the road that same day.

Several reports of pieces of roofing, fences and other building materials coming loose kept officials busy as did reports of falling trees and limbs.

Stockade-style fences seemed to have fared particularly badly with toppled sections seen in yards on West Main and North streets as well as Burtis Avenue.

North Street sustained storm damage again as a large portion of a tree on the east side of the road came down near where an entire tree narrowly missed the home of Mayor Jay Niles earlier in the year.

Across North Street at the junction another home had a front-yard pine tree uprooted. New York State Electric and Gas, headquartered in Ithaca, announced on Dec. 2 about 1,200 customers remained without power in the Mechanicville Division, which includes Washington County.

While the lights might have flickered and the cable system went out in portions of the village for a part of the afternoon of Dec. 1, the majority of those without power were from outside of the immediate area in New York and across the border in Vermont.

The northernmost portion of the outages in Washington County were reported in Hebron, with some in Jackson before moving outside of the county to the south, including Canaan, Chatham and New Lebanon.

Officials with NYSEG said they expected to restore power to all of those customers before the end of the day Dec. 2.