Connecticut saw downed wires, power outages, and the closure or delay of local schools on Friday, following a night of heavy winds.

In New London, wires came down in the areas of 147 Crystal Ave. and 26 Prospect St., according to a message early Friday morning from CT Alert, closing Winthrop STEM Elementary Magnet School and Regional Multicultural Magnet School for the day.

Mayor Michael Passero said the wires down on Crystal Avenue resulted in emergency responses, considering this impacted people in the senior housing project who needed power for medical equipment. He said the town opened its emergency operations center shortly after 4 a.m.

Passero expected Prospect Street to "be the lingering issue" because of the infrastructure damage. While a downed tree resulted in serious damage to one house, the mayor said it could've been a lot worse, considering the bulk of the tree fell between two houses. There were no injuries.

All public schools in Montville and East Lyme were closed on Friday. Waterford, Ledyard and Preston schools had a two-hour delay.

Before making the call about the two-hour delay, Ledyard Superintendent Jay Hartling tweeted, "We've been up since 4 am evaluating the impact from the storm. Outages reported throughout town and impacting several schools. Power crews can't start their work until the wind dies out so at this point restoration is TBD."

As of about 8 p.m., more than 21,500 Eversource customers were without power, down from 74,000 about 9 a.m. Friday. In southeastern Connecticut, the most outages throughout the morning and into the afternoon were in Montville and Ledyard. The Connecticut town with the largest percentage of people without power was Marlborough, at more than 80 percent of the 2,652 customers served there.

Norwich Public Utilities restored power by 1 p.m. to all customers impacted by the extreme weather, spokesperson Chris Riley said in an email to news media. During the peak of the storm, about 2:30 a.m. Friday, NPU had approximately 850 customers out of service. Many of them were on Mohegan Park Road, where a fallen tree was being cleared.

Shortly before 8 a.m., East Lyme Public Safety posted on Facebook that there were wires down in the roadway at 22 Monticello Drive. It also reported a tree and wires down on Legendary Road and South Beechwood Road, before providing an update at 9:18 a.m. that South Beechwood was open again.

At 4:40 p.m. Friday, East Lyme Public Safety provided the update that the town had gone from 1,420 outages to 144, adding that a new crew of Eversource workers was relieving staff at 5 p.m. The utility's website showed only 63 remaining outages shortly after 8 p.m.

Through its traffic alert system, the state Department of Transportation had reported Route 161 at Rocco Drive in East Lyme closed for a tree and wires down, and Route 85 in Waterford closed at Turner Road for a tree in the roadway, but those roads were no longer reported closed by mid-morning. Just after 11 a.m., the department reported Route 163 in Montville closed between Bridge Street and Maple Avenue because of a tree down with wires.

Waterford police reported Friday morning that power outages on Route 1 resulted in several traffic lights being out, including at Route 156, Clark Lane, Willetts Avenue and Strosberg Road. Police also reported wires down in the area of Donald Avenue in Quaker Hill.

Ledyard police reported that Oakwood Drive was fully closed, and that Long Cove Road was closed at Pheasant Run.

Western Connecticut State University Meteorologist Gary Lessor said Groton reached a peak wind gust of 56 mph at 3:12 a.m. Friday, while New London saw a wind gust of 47 mph at 12:48 a.m. He said peak wind gusts reached 64 mph at Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison and 59 mph in Bridgeport.

By comparison, Lessor said one might see wind gusts near 30 mph on a normal breezy day.

Wind gusts around 50 mph are something he said "occurs more regularly in the late fall through spring, and then as you go through summer the winds typically diminish unless you get a tropical storm."

Lessor is forecasting light winds over the weekend, averaging 5 to 10 mph, with mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the low to mid-50s. He expects temperatures to drop the following weekend, with highs in the low to mid-40s and lows in the 20s, but he said there's no sign of snow yet.

e.moser@theday.com