HAVERHILL - Had it not been for several days of increasingly dire warnings that preceded Monday's arrival of Hurricane Sandy on the mid-Atlantic shore, it would be tough to tell that anything out of the ordinary had occurred in this stretch of western New Hampshire near the Vermont border.

Storms that have gotten much less advance notice have delivered a lot more impact hereabouts. By daylight Tuesday, in fact, it seemed apparent that nothing unusual weather-wise had happened in this area that includes the northern tip of the Upper Valley and southern edge of the North Country.

In Haverhil's precinct of Woodsville, for example, which includes the town's shopping district, much of Court Street is in a flood plain where water often collects, even after just moderate storms. That didn't happen this time, and reports of fallen limbs and downed power lines were localized; a small section of Easton, for example.

"We dodged a bullet nicely," Bill Matteson said late Tuesday morning as he worked behind the counter of the Swiftwater Way Station, his general store on Route 112. "I got out of work (Monday) night at 8 o'clock, and it was dead calm. We sold a ton of gasoline beforehand because of all the warnings, and water and other supplies, but nothing really happened here.

"Aldrich's, a busy market on Route 10 in North Haverhill, is an excellent source of local information. But proprietor Phil Tucker said Tuesday there were virtually no reports of damage, and the one power outage he had heard of was quite a distance to the southeast in the town of Warren.