Winter Storm Alfred knocked down hundreds of trees in North Haven and, at the peak of power outages, had 2,640 residents without electricity, according to town officials.

Numbers of locals without electricity, however, quickly dwindled as crews began removing fallen trees from power lines after the Oct. 29 snowstorm , which had left hundreds of thousands of households across Connecticut without power.

“What we did was have residents without power who could not get through to UI [United Illuminating] call us instead and we’re calling UI for them,” said First Selectman Michael Freda on Nov. 1.

While Alfred’s path through North Haven may have been less severe than other state towns in terms of total downed trees and power outages, clean-up costs will still be on the minds of local leaders as winter progresses.

“We had to deploy resources to plow the roads. Of course, we were not anticipating this in October,” Freda said.

Last year’s winter brought record snowfall in North Haven, at the expense of the public works department’s storm clean-up budget.

“There is no doubt that, because of what occurred last weekend, that line item will exceed what we had budgeted for it,” Freda said. “But, first and foremost, we’re driven by helping the people of North Haven and I want to deploy our resources right away when there’s a problem.”

Government aid could help offset costs. “We will be applying for federal assistance,” Freda said. “President Obama declared Connecticut a State of Emergency.”

In immediate response to Alfred, Public Works Director Lynn Sadosky and her crews could only remove certain toppled trees. “We can clear trees, but if that tree is tied up in power lines, or within 10 feet of an active wire, we cannot legally touch it,” she said Nov. 1. “So we try to address everything that’s not close to wires. We have to assume that any wires are live, and we report the fallen wires to UI.”

Sadosky does not expect a winter with quite as much snowfall as 2010. “I’m really focusing on the Farmers’ Almanac. There’s one of them which is published out of Main and it’s pretty accurate, and it’s saying that we’re going to have an earlier winter this year,” she said. “It’s saying that December and January are going to be filled with more precipitation, but then the snow will die out after that.”

Snowfall records last year were fueled by late-season storms which occurred up to April. “Typically, we get 35 total inches of snow every year in North Haven,” Sadosky said. “Last year’s 85 inches was a fluke. We’re not expecting that again.”

“We’re expecting the bulk of the snow this year to come earlier,” she added. “Then February and March will be more like wet weather, spring season.”