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More than a half-million people in the Northeast woke up to darkness on Thursday, as an unseasonably strong Nor’easter slammed the region with rain and high winds.
With powerful wind gusts bringing trees crashing down on power lines, over 225,000 households and businesses in Massachusetts had no electricity on Thursday morning, poweroutage.us and that state's emergency management agency said.
In Maine, more than 196,000 households and businesses were without power Thursday morning, while in New York the number was about 41,000, poweroutage.us said at 8:31 a.m.
Acadia National Park in Maine evacuated one of its largest campgrounds Wednesday ahead of the storm, NBC affiliate WCSH said. The outlet also reported that electrical transformers were blowing out around the state due to the Nor'easter.
The Massachusetts State Police tweeted that it responded to "numerous reports of trees and some utility wires down" along the Interstate 90 corridor from Springfield to Deerfield, including some cases in which roads were blocked.
In Boston, winds gusted at 70 mph at Logan International Airport early Thursday, and a gust of 88 mph was recorded at Yarmouth on Cape Cod, the National Weather Service said.
In Amityville on Long Island outside of New York City, an empty building collapsed in the storm. Police said there were no injuries and no damage to other buildings in the area.
Classes were cancelled in dozens of schools from Connecticut north to Maine on Thursday.
Rebecca Casserly of Everett, Massachusetts told NBC Boston she woke up at 1:30 a.m. to the sound of a large tree coming down on her property.“I flew out of my bed and saw complete darkness. ... I opened my door and saw nothing but greenery.” She added that she saw a downed tree when she went outside.
Meteorologists had forecast that this storm would go through a “bombogenesis,” meaning it'd drop 24 millibars in pressure in 24 hours, leading to a "bomb cyclone." These systems are typically characterized by intense winds, heavy rain and dangerous surf.
