Bitchin & Moaning

The Fourth of July storm came out of nowhere. The severe weather warning was only a Level 2 — Moderate.

I heard some rumbling, and the sky darkened, but then it lightened again, and then—WHAM!

So, being a political year, the Republicans are complaining!

Powerful Fourth of July storm leaves Connecticut damaged, without power on Sunday

By Jessica Bravo, Josh LaBella,

CT Insider

July 5, 2026

Connecticut was struck by severe thunderstorms during Fourth of July festivities on Saturday night that left serious damage throughout the state and tens of thousands of power outages. 

CT Insider Meteorologist Dan Amarante said winds potentially up to 80 mph were moving into the western part of the state around 8 p.m. Saturday. All while this was happening, the National Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm warnings from Hartford County to New London County. The NWS then extended the thunderstorm watch they had issued through 11 p.m. Saturday for northwest Connecticut.

Poof! The sky literally opened up! With a microburst, as CT Mirror wrote;

Baseball-sized hail fell in parts of Connecticut during this weekend’s stormy Fourth of July — and it may have set a new state record.

The series of storms, which left more than 100,000 people without power in Connecticut, struck communities from eastern New York to Rhode Island, according to Bryce Williams, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“We had a complex of storms move through the southern half of southern New England on the Fourth of July,” Williams said. “We had a few kind of supercell-looking storms… and behind them we had a strong line of storms which produced quite a bit of wind damage, in addition to some large hail.”

Okay, the scene has been set. Massive storm clouds were billowing overhead until the downburst hit. The Republicans' requests have focused on questions such as whether Eversource had sufficient crews and resources available before the storm and whether restoration priorities and communications with customers and municipal officials were adequate.

Fazio, Elliott criticize Lamont and Eversource on storm response

CT Mirror

by Julia Levine and John Moritz

July 8, 2026

Gov. Ned Lamont toured areas of Litchfield County that were strewn with fallen trees and other debris on Tuesday as his administration and utility officials faced criticism over their response to a series of unusually powerful storms over the Fourth of July weekend. 

[...]

Meanwhile, the two candidates hoping to unseat Lamont in this year’s gubernatorial race — Republican Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, and Democratic Rep. Josh Elliott, D-Hamden — criticized the response from Lamont and Eversource as inadequate. 

Fazio said he visited impacted areas of New Canaan, in his senate district, on Monday and later travelled to Harwinton to tour damage with town officials on Tuesday.

Fazio said there appeared to be a lack of communication between the Lamont administration and local officials, and he criticized the governor for waiting three days to visit impacted areas. He also said he questioned whether Eversource had appropriately monitored forecasts leading up to the storm or had enough crews on standby to respond. 

Before the storm, no one had any inkling of how bad it was going to be. Within an hour, there were people with tablets assessing the damage. Then came the crews with chainsaws and wood chippers. To me, it seemed like a very well-organized recovery effort.

My only complaint was the utilities' reporting of the outage. Just say you don't know when the power will be back on. I looked outside, and everything was flattened! When did they first say the power would be restored? Eversource said it would be back on by 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning... four days later it came back on!

If they had simply come out and said, "This is a major outage, and for some customers it could be days before power is restored," I would have cornered the ice market to keep the food cold.

Updated: Added the second CT Mirror article...