A strong wind and snowstorm during the early part of 1959 raised havoc with most electric utilities along the Massachusetts coast. Heavy, pasty snow clung to almost everything, bringing down many of the tall elms that once graced the town. Even though careful tree trimming was conducted for decades throughout the town to preserve them, the remaining elms (prior hurricanes, storms and Dutch Elm disease during 1952-53 did a lot of them in) were becoming fewer and fewer. The Light Department did their best to string their wires away from the community's trees to minimize wire contact, outages and trimming. This practice was accomplished by "alley-arm" crossarm construction which allowed the utility's wires to be strung further out from the pole; toward the roadway where there was less foliage. This method of line construction was fairly commonplace throughout Hingham and it worked very well. Although storms and scenes such as viewed above were pretty much unpredictable.