[ghc]

living in New England, I have also never heard of this and I don't think it's understandable at all. Trees are pruned around power lines for a reason.

[bitbckt]

Multiple day outages in Winter are not unusual in our part of Maine. Nearly everyone has a whole home generator for good reason.

[ghaff]

Live in ex-urban MA and it’s not common but have had a couple of multi-day power outages in both winter and summer over the decades I’ve lived here. Don’t remember the details of the summer outage but the winter one was a massive ice storm.

[ghc]

Sure, but that's not the same as losing power during the first snowstorm every year. The massive ice storm was back in 2010 IIRC.

[swiftcoder]

Couple of tail-ends of hurricanes in summer offlined a big chunk of Massachusetts when I was living there. Likely one of those?

[dd82]

come up to maine and see how much pruning the power companies do. there's a reason high wind and heavy snow storms trash power lines

[ghc]

As an adolescent in Fayette (Maine), I had great fun helping out our neighbors with summertime tree-pruning parties. FWIW we had few power issues during winter, and our winters frequently featured 4-6 feet of snow cover.