UPDATED: More than 2,300 Lose Power, Dirlam Circle Residents Cut Off

UPDATE: 8 p.m.

As of 8 p.m., National Grid had restored power to around 2,100 residents in the Long Pond/Whipple Road area.

There are still more than 200 residents without power, including a 79 customer cluster of Fiske Street in North Tewksbury.

Tewksbury Patch will continue to keep you posted on the latest outage information.

Original Story

Hurricane Sandy may have made landfall in New Jersey but her impact has certainly been felt in Tewksbury.

Trees, limbs and utility wires are down from one end of town to the other, leaving more than 2,300 customers without power as of 7:30 p.m. Most of those in the dark are in the Long Pond/Whipple Road area.

But the biggest problem is being felt by those living on Dirlam Circle, who were cut off from the rest of the town around 5 p.m., when a tree came crashing down across the road, taking power lines with it.

The situation was made much more dangerous because Dirlam Circle had flooded and the live wires came to rest in the water, electrifying it.

As of 7:30 p.m. crews were still working on the situation, trying to kill the power to the neighborhood, clean up the wires and remove the tree.

According to the broadcast reports, Hurricane Sandy brought wind gusts as high as 61 mph to the Merrimack Valley. As the day wore on, the rainfall picked up and as much as two inches are predicted by the end of the day.