By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A nor’easter that blew in Wednesday dropped up to half a foot of heavy wet snow in parts of Mercer County still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Sandy.
Local officials from towns in the Princeton region reported downed power lines, some fallen trees and delayed openings of public schools on Thursday morning.
No injuries were reported, although there were reported motor vehicle accidents from the first snowfall of the season.
Snow totals varied in the county, said Mitchell Gaines, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Mt. Holly monitoring station. Hightstown received 7.2 inches on the high end, while Robbinsville got 3 inches, he said Thursday.
Utilities had been making progress in restoring power to the millions of people who had lost power during Sandy.
The nor’easter, dubbed Athena, caused a setback to those efforts. PSE&G reported Thursday the storm caused more than 90,000 customers to lose power in the state starting around noon Wednesday, on top of the 70,000 still without electricity since last week.
The utility reported Thursday afternoon that about 45,000 customers got their power back who lost it during Athena.
In an eastern section of West Windsor around Old Trenton Road about 100 homes lost power as a result of the snow, township Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh said Thursday.
He said utility Jersey Central Power & Light, responsible for serving that part of the township, has said power could back by the end of Thursday. The mayor said he was hopeful that the entire community would be fully restored by the weekend.
Princeton municipal engineer Robert V. Kiser said Thursday that Spruce Circle in the borough had lost power as a result of the snowstorm. Also, he said the township municipal building had lost power Wednesday but that it came back on.
”We had more wires down, trees leaning over roads. Nothing significant but we did take a couple of steps backward in the overall recovery to Sandy,” said Princeton Borough Administrator Robert W. Bruschi in an email Thursday.
Plainsboro reported that a downed power line caused a ramp closure from Route 1 south to College East.A downed power line at Terhune and Mt. Lucas roads disrupted service to the municipal fueling center that is used by borough and township police and public works, said Donald Hansen, the township superintendent of public works. A generator is powering the center, he said Thursday.Township Mayor Chad Goerner stressed Thursday the importance of residents reporting power outages directly to PSE&G. He expressed some frustration with the utility, which has projected that power would not be fully restored to Princeton until this weekend.
Mr. Goerner said officials would like to know where those still-impacted homes are so the residents can be contacted to make other accommodations. He said the utility has indicated it cannot provide that level of information for each and every town in the state. Princeton commuters did get a piece of welcome news this week. The Dinky train line connecting the Princeton with Princeton Junction, was restored Wednesday, said NJ Transit spokeswoman Nancy Snyder. The service had been out of commission since last week because of overhead wire damage, she said Thursday.
Prior to that, Princeton University and then later NJ Transit ran shuttle bus service between the two locations.

