Written by: Associated Press
2 min readWaylandNov 1, 2011 02:39 PM IST
First published on: Nov 1, 2011 at 02:39 PM IST
Hundreds of thousands of people across the northeastern US faced days without heat or lights after a freak October snowstorm over the weekend,and many towns postponed Halloween reveling in what seemed like a mean prank to some children.
From Maryland to Maine,high winds and wet,heavy snow brought down trees,branches and wires Saturday and Sunday. Snowfall amounts ranged from less than inch in some places to inches 81 centimeters in the small town of Peru,Massachusetts,in the Berkshire Mountains.
The storm was blamed for at least 21 deaths,including one in Canada,mostly caused by falling trees,traffic accidents or electrocutions from downed wires. Eight people died in Pennsylvania alone.
Families huddled under blankets and winter coats at home or waited out the crisis in shelters as utility crews struggled to fix power lines brought down by the storm.
Hundreds of schools closed,giving youngsters one of the earliest snow days on record.
“Such a small storm but such a big disaster,” said Marina Shen,who spent Sunday night with her husband and dog at a middle school in Wayland,a Boston suburb of 13,000 where half the homes lost power. Just a few inches centimeters fell in Wayland,and most of it had melted by yesterday,but overnight temperatures fell below freezing.
More than 3 million homes and businesses in the Northeast lost power at the height of the storm. By last night,that number was down to around 2.2 million.
Some of the same areas were hit hard by the rainy remnants of Hurricane Irene just two months ago,but in many places the utility damage was worse this time. The trees had yet to lose their leaves and captured all too much of the snow.
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