A powerful nor’easter storm brought strong winds and heavy snow to Maine and New Hampshire a few days ago, and things are still rough for many people.
Over 100,000 homes and businesses in these states are still without power, facing a long wait to get their lights back on.
Even though hundreds of crews are working around the clock to fix the damage – that’s over 1,100 repair crews and 400 tree-cutting teams! – it might take until early next week for some people to have electricity again. Most of the outages are in southern Maine, where there were originally more than 150,000 without power on Saturday. In New Hampshire, over 10,000 homes and businesses are still dealing with the blackout.
The utility companies have a lot of work to do. There were more than 5,000 problems reported during the storm, including hundreds of broken utility poles that need fixing. This has been a tough winter and spring for Maine, which has a lot of trees. A storm in December knocked out power for nearly half a million homes and businesses, and an ice storm last month left another 200,000 in the dark. This recent nor’easter hit on Wednesday night and Thursday, leaving over 300,000 without power at its peak.
Some people believe that climate change might be making these storms worse. An official with the main electric company in Maine says they’re seeing stronger and more frequent storms lately, and they think it’s linked to climate change.
The storm brought over a foot of snow to many areas in northern New England. At one point, almost 700,000 customers across New England were without power, making it the biggest April nor’easter to hit the region since 2020.