Tens of thousands without power in New England and New York after powerful snowstorm
Utility crews raced Saturday to restore power to tens of thousands of customers across New England and New York after a powerful storm dumped 2 feet of snow in some places.
As of Sunday morning, more than 58,000 customers were without power in Maine according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages across the country. More than 9,000 in New Hampshire, 6,000 in Vermont and 6,000 in New York also were left in the dark, according to poweroutage.us.
Restoration efforts on Saturday were complicated by snow still falling in some places, making travel dangerous. Doug Foley, Eversource president of electric operations in New Hampshire, said snow-covered roads were making it tough for workers to reach communities in order to assess damage and make repairs.
"We are still taking on system damage in parts of the state where heavy, wet snow continues to fall, and hundreds of additional crews are coming to New Hampshire to support our restoration effort," Foley said in an emailed statement.
As of Saturday afternoon, Eversource had restored power to nearly 61,000 customers in New Hampshire since the beginning of the storm, but another 40,000 remained without power, according to the utility.
Green Mountain Power, which serves customers in Vermont, said more outages were possible there with temperatures not expected to warm up enough in the next couple of days to melt the snow.
"Clearing downed trees to get to outage locations has been slow and difficult," Mike Burke, the utility company's vice president of field operations, said in a statement.
More than 2 feet of snow was recorded in parts of Vermont and western New York, and many communities across the region saw more than a foot, according to the National Weather Service.
As promised earlier, we have our snowfall map from this winter storm event. In all, there were areas that got little to no snow to over 2 feet of snow. A very much elevation dependent event. Thank you all for your dedication and reports! It's very much appreciated! Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/zlWw0Xnj7j
— NWS Albany (@NWSAlbany) December 17, 2022
A lake-effect snow warning was also in effect until 1 p.m. Monday for several western New York counties. The National Weather Service said Sunday that "significant additional accumulations" of snow are expected off Lake Erie.