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Wild weather day: a snowy morning, a windy day, then evening snow squalls

Trees damaged homes and cut power to thousands; freeze warning until 8 a.m. Sunday
Credit: John Tyburski

HARTFORD, Conn. — "If you don't like the weather in New England, wait a minute", the old saying goes. It's an exaggeration -- most of the time. But not on Saturday, as Connecticut spent the day riding a meteorological merry-go-round.

The morning began with unseasonably cold temperatures and people living in higher elevations woke up to a coating of snow in mid-May. 

Sun and blue skies took over by mid-morning, but gusty winds created havoc in many areas. 

Eversource reported over 3,000 customers without power Saturday afternoon.

The outages -- mostly scattered throughout Hartford, Tolland, and Windham counties - had dropped to about 1800 by 10 p.m, with 700 of them in the city of Bristol. Bradley Airport reported a 49 mph wind gust Saturday afternoon. 

Click here for a list of the outages by town and city. 

According to the Tolland Fire Department, a tree fell into a moving vehicle on Old Stafford Road. No one was injured, but the road was closed while the tree was removed. 

Trees shut down other roads or damaged houses. 

Here are some photos that were sent in to FOX61 from viewers across the state seeing wind damage.

Then in the late afternoon and evening, snow returned in the form of squalls that rolled through towns including Berlin, Portland, Cromwell, Hartford and Manchester. 

Some of the snow came in the form of 'graupel', a form of frozen precipitation created when super-cooled water droplets collect on snowflakes in the upper atmosphere. It can look like hail, but is soft like snow, and has a different crystalline structure. 

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