Tens of thousands of residents across Maryland’s Eastern Shore were without power Monday after more than a foot of snow blanketed the region late Sunday into early Monday.

Schools closed across the lower shore as the city of Salisbury and Wicomico County declared states of emergency, and a town in Worcester County lost electricity entirely. Despite widespread outages, authorities reported few major crashes as many residents stayed off the roads.

Immediately after the storm passed, Delmarva Power estimated about 35,000 customers without power across its service area, including roughly 20,000 in Maryland — mostly in Somerset, Wicomico and Worcester counties — and about 15,000 in Delaware. Choptank Electric Cooperative reported an additional 13,500 customers without electricity. That improved throughout the day, but still left thousands without light late afternoon on Monday.

Katie Luckett, a communications manager for Choptank, said 40% of its customers were without power at one point. That number had dropped to 23% by 9 a.m. Monday and then fell to 17% by 4 p.m.

“It’s widespread from Caroline County south,” she said. “All nine counties are impacted currently. We have brought in crews from other electric co-ops to assist with repairs and restore power.”

Power outages and wind gusts

Eswar Iyer, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia, said officials were still gathering data, but up to 15 inches of snow fell on the lower Eastern Shore.

“We’re still in the process of gathering reports here, and there are a lot of power outages as well, just because of the combination of the snow and wind,” Iyer said. “We had gusts to 60 miles per hour at Ocean City, and then the observing station there went out right after that.”

Woody Vickers, deputy director of Public Works in Ocean City, said the area from 40th Street south to the inlet was without power for much of Sunday night and into Monday morning.

“There was numerous fire calls for alarms, a lot of them due to the electrical outages that happened, which then set off alarms to some of the hotels, and so forth throughout the night. We’re still without power in downtown area. I’m hearing somewhere between 700 to 1,100 locations,” Vickers said Monday morning.

Vickers said heavy snow and high winds continued through much of Sunday night. He described “a lot of transformers putting off fireworks throughout the night.”

“It was pretty brutal conditions. Whiteout conditions,” he said. “We had public works staff onsite since 5 o’clock last night, and we continue to work to clear the roadways for residents in town. They’ve been here for 16 hours and will continue to work into the late morning, early afternoon, I’m sure.”

Vickers said elsewhere in the county crews “have really been struggling with a lot of trucks getting stuck, stranded.”

“They can’t plow because of a lot of trees down and wires,” he said. “We’ve been fortunate in that regard. Our problem is we’re much smaller and we’re battling a lot of snow, and a lot of wind is pushing it around. But we’ll work through it, that’s for sure.”

Worcester County Sheriff Matt Crisafulli said there were several trees down throughout the county, including some on major roadways.

“We have responded to multiple vehicles in ditches throughout the night,” he said. “No injury crashes that I am aware of at present.”

The entire town of Berlin was without power beginning around 10 p.m. Sunday, and outages continued into Monday morning.

Berlin is unique on the Eastern Shore in that it operates its own municipal electric utility, serving local homes and businesses directly. The town generates some electricity at a small power plant on William Street but purchases most of its power from outside suppliers. That electricity is delivered into Berlin through the regional transmission grid, which in much of the area is operated by Delmarva Power.

Berlin Mayor Zack Tyndall took to Facebook to provide an update early Monday morning, saying the issue, in this case, was with Delmarva Power.

“Town crews have spent the evening working to clear down trees and wires, plow the streets, and fix issues related to the storm and power outage,” Tyndall wrote. “Unfortunately, the source of the issue is not a Berlin Electric issue but an issue with electricity coming into town from Delmarva Power.”

Tyndall asked for patience as town crews and Delmarva Power worked to restore service.

Zach Chizar, a senior communications specialist with Exelon, the parent company of Delmarva Power, said service was restored to some residents by around 9:30 a.m. on Monday.

“All of our restoration times are suspended, but we do have crews actively on site working this one,” Chizar said. “We do encourage customers to request a callback so they know when their power is restored. We appreciate everyone’s patience as our crews are able to navigate the winds and road conditions to be able to assess and make any repairs.”

Chizar said that as of 4 p.m. Monday, there were still 1,014 people without power in Ocean City. Another 6,000 were in the dark in Wicomico County and Somerset reported 4,000 still without power Monday afternoon. .

Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis said deputies and county road crews were responding to calls for service throughout the county, with police handling many of the downed trees on roadways.

“We now have many businesses, including our own government office building, without power,” Lewis said. “We’re encouraging everyone to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary.”

Victoria Idoni, public information officer for Salisbury, said all city operations were either offline or running on generators.

Chris Hopkins, a spokesperson for Somerset County Emergency Services, said 3,000 residents there were without power early Monday, but there were no major accidents.

Other parts of the Eastern Shore fared better.

Cambridge Police Chief Justin Todd said there were no major accidents or power outages.

“The city, county and state are doing a great job of clearing the main roads,” Todd said.

Easton saw significant snowfall, but also reported no major issues.

“In Easton, we did receive some significant snowfall, but not as much accumulation as we anticipated,” Greg Mueller, a communications specialist for the town, said. “The roads are mostly clear now, and there were no significant accidents or outages that I am aware of.”

Kevin Witt, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in Baltimore, said the rest of the state was less impacted.

“The storm system moved offshore from Carolina and moved a little farther east than models were previously indicating, but we did get several inches of snow in northeast Maryland,” he said.

Witt said Odenton saw, 2.3 inches. Annapolis got 2 inches, and parts of Baltimore County received up to 5 inches of snow. He added what did accumulate is not likely to go away within the next day or two.

“Temperatures are going to get down into the mid-20s tonight and then tomorrow tomorrow hit a high in the middle 30s,” he said. “But, it looks like Wednesday into Thursday we’re going to reach near 50 or into the 50s, and then whatever’s left by Wednesday and Thursday will probably be gone by the end of the week.”

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