Thunderstorms knocked out power to more than 24,000 New Hampshire homes and businesses in more than 50 communities Tuesday night.

“We've had reports of better than 60 mph winds in some places,” said James Brown, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine.

“We're looking mostly for wind damage.” he said. “We've all kinds of trees down”

Downed wires closed a section of the Spaulding Turnpike, the Rochester police Tweeted. Public Service of New Hampshire had more than 1,100 customers in the dark in Rochester.

Alton was one of the communities with 60-plus mph winds and all but one of 4,300-plus electric customers were without electricity.

The New Hampshire Electric Co-op reported 11,890 customers in the dark. PSNH had 12,463 customers without power and Unitil recorded 103. National Grid reported 292.

PSNH spokesman Matthew Chagnon said the outages were spread over a wide section of the state.

“From what I understand, there's a lot of wires down,” he said. “There's some poles down in some cases and those can take longer because it requires different crews to come in and set the poles.”

“We've got a very warm, humid air mass in place and a colder air mass coming down from Canada,” Brown said. “The two are clashing and creating these thunderstorms.”

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