A late-season winter storm system swept through the Northeast US on April 19, bringing strong winds and over a foot of snow to some areas, leaving more than 3,00,000 customers without electricity across five states.
There were 3,07,305 customers without power in New York, Pennsylvania, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire at around 10 am (ET), according to PowerOutage.us, a website that tracks and aggregates outages.
New York had the most customers without power at over 2,00,000 in the morning, though that number had decreased to about 1,96,000 customers by early afternoon.
Heavy, wet snow blanked swaths of the northeast from New England to West Virginia on Tuesday, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people amid a spring storm.
The nor'easter dumped 18 inches of heavy snow on Virgil, in central New York, while parts of eastern Pennsylvania received up to 14 inches of snowfall, according to the Weather Prediction Center. The agency reported snow fall was measured in states including Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia and West Virginia.
The storm also brought strong winds to New England, topping at 230 kilometres per hour on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, and 100 kph at Matinicus Rock off Maine, the National Weather Service reported.
The wind contributed to the hundreds of thousands of power outages across the northeast caused by the late-season storm.
The storm snapped tree limbs and interrupted power to more than 350,000 utility customers in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
By early Wednesday morning, that number dropped to about 1,29,000, according to poweroutage.us, a website that tracks power outages across the country.
"Most of that event occurred between 4 a.m. and 9 a.m. So people woke up in darkness, the alarms didn’t go off, and realized that they were in for perhaps a long haul without having their critical power," Hochul said at a Tuesday evening press conference.
At one point, around 47,000 customers were without power in northeast Pennsylvania, and about 26,000 remained without power by 4 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to poweroutage.us. Most of the 39,000 outages in New England were in Maine and Vermont, where some parts of the state received six inches of snow or more.
(with inputs from AP)
