If you add up the numbers, it looks like as of last night, there were about 750,000 folks without power.
Crews have come in from as far away as S. Carolina, Viginia, and Canada.
A friend of mine works for National Grid and was meeting crews from Virginia as they arrived last night.
No one has seen this type of devastation in New England. There was an ice storm in 1998 that hit Maine and went up through Canada, but people in the rest of New England weren't impacted too badly. There were people in Quebec that went without power for 45 days.
Ice storms like this are strange, to say the least. I live about 10miles from Worcester, which has been devastated by this storm, yet there was no ice at all at my house.
Yesterday my wife and I drove North from here in two separate vehicles on two separate roads that run parallel to each other, about 3-4miles apart. We both saw a swath during that 10mile ride that was about 1/2 mile wide where trees and lines were down, ice everywhere, and then on then a bit further north, no ice what so ever.
A lot of generators will be sold, and a lot of folks will wish they had one before this is all over.
Another secondary effect is that parts of Worcester, Ma, are infested with the Asian Longhorn Beetle. A very serious threat to trees/forrests. No one is allowed to remove any wood from the contaminated areas as it has to be handled in a very specific way. The beetle is pretty much impervious to pesticides and is almost impossible to eradicate, once an infestation happens. No one knows what impact this will have on the spead...as no one can account for all the wood in situations like this.
More on the beetle:
ALB attacks and kills many hardwood trees, such as maple, elm, horsechestnut, ash, birch, poplar, willow and many more. ALB could significantly disrupt the forest ecosystem if it became established over a large area.
http://www.uvm.edu/albeetle/
Jim
Update at 7am...
Numbers of folks without power in Mass are down to 200,000. Looks like crews made some pretty good progress overnight.
No idea what the numbers are in the other states...NH and Southern/coastal Maine got hit at least as hard as Worcester, I think.
! Remember the old New England saying...."if you don't like the weather.....wait a minute"
