The Daily Five: Power Outages, Thanks to Old Lyme's Finest, And Buzz About The Samuel Smith House

1. We may have hit a new record for weather alerts yesterday, with warnings for high pollen, high winds, severe thunderstorms, flash flooding, and a watch for tornadoes. Today, however, the wind should have blown the clouds away.

Weather.com is predicting early morning showers, then skies should clear to bring us some sun late in the afternoon. The high temperature should be around 69 degrees, the overnight low 49 degrees, and the chances of rain should drop from 20 percent to 10 percent this evening.

2. Depending on where you were, last night's storm ranged from not-much-to-write-home-about to pretty severe, with heavy rains, flooded roads, and power losses. Fairfield County saw most of the flooding and most of the power outages seemed to occur in Fairfield and Windham Counties. Our area did not escape entirely unscathed, however.

As of midnight, 190 Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) customers in Old Lyme had no power, which represents about 3 percent of the total number of customers served by CL&P in town. By 3:30 a.m. that number was down to just four but in Lyme 124 people (9 percent of CL&P customers) were still without power. Just one house in East Lyme had no power. (And I bet the residents there felt really unlucky, particularly because CL&P is going to deal with the biggest outages first!)

3. Being a police officer can be a thankless job so it was with some pleasure that Old Lyme First Selectwoman Bonnie Reemsnyder read a letter of appreciation at Monday's Board of Selectmen meeting commending Old Lyme Police Officer Robert Tyson for his deft handling of a car accident earlier this summer.

The vehicle did damage to two properties and the property owners were none too happy with the young man doing the driving but, according to the property owner who sent the letter, Tyson skillfully defused the situation and struck just the right note of concern and sternness with the driver. The young man, by the way, returned the next day to help repair the damage he had done. The property owner sent a $50 donation to the Police Union as a thank you. 

4. East Lyme will hold a Special Town Meeting tonight at 7 p.m. to vote on a special appropriation of $128,871 to upgrade the lighting at the Field Services Complex building at 8 Capitol Drive to make it more energy efficient. This is part of the town's capital improvement plan and the cost to the town would be offset by a $30,000 grant from CL&P. 

5. The East Lyme Board of Selectmen meeting will follow the Special Town Meeting. The proposed purchase of the Samuel Smith property at 82 Plants Dam Road is on the agenda again and is likely to draw the most interest. The group of volunteers who have been advocating in favor of the acquisition will be offering tours of the property today from 2 to 4 p.m. and will be available at East Lyme Town Hall at 6:15 p.m. to provide more information about the historic home.