WORST STORM OF WINTER HITS

Travel Advisory In Effect

For Otsego County ’til 9

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

A few minutes ago, Sheriff Richard J. Devlin, Jr. issued a travel advisory for all Otsego County roads until 9 p.m. this evening.

Roads are not closed, the sheriff said, but caution is advised since hazardous driving conditions might be encountered, such as poor visibility, slippery roads and drifting snow.

For the county, the National Weather Service is predicting snow, freezing rain and sleet through the afternoon, heavy at times, with accumulations of 4-8 inches.   There’s a chance of snow through the night into Saturday morning, with conditions changing to partly sunny Saturday afternoon.  Temperatures will continue around freezing through the day, but dropping down to 5 tonight.

Through the morning, occasional outages caused by heavy snow were reported throughout the county.  Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown was on generator power for about 15 minutes, before NYSEG reestablished the connection, according to the Vice President for Plant Jonathan Flyte.

At this hour, NYSEG is reporting 3,283 county customers without power, mostly in the Town of Springfield, where 741 of 801 customers have lost power.  More than 500 homes are without power in the town and village of Milford, and hundreds are without power in the towns of Burlington, Laurens and Otsego.

At the Cooperstown Winter Carnival, this evening’s lip-synch contes at the Roaring ’20s Showdown at Brewery Ommegang is cancelled for this evening.  The Friends of the Library Book Sale was underway at Village Hall, but when power went out it closed down for the day.

In Cooperstown, power went out three times at AllOTSEGO.com’s offices at 21 Railroad Ave. while efforts were underway to post this article.