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More than 70,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity in New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts on Friday, two days after a pre-Thanksgiving Day nor’easter dumped snow on the region, bringing down trees and power lines.
Approximately 66,000 customers were without power in New Hampshire as of late Friday night. Maine had restored service to all but about 4,100, while Massachusetts power companies reported that roughly 1,500 remained without power.
The relief came after the outages on Thanksgiving forced people to cancel plans; cook turkeys on grills, wood stoves, or in smokers; or resort to restaurants and takeout.
Public Service of New Hampshire had a peak outage number of 207,000; Central Maine Power outages peaked at 104,000; National Grid in Massachusetts topped out at 20,000 outages; and NStar reached a total of 8,500 outages at one point, the companies said.
Maine turned to Canada for help.
“It’s not unusual for us to call Canada because we’re closer to Canada, especially when we get a storm like this one, where a good part of the Northeast was affected,” said Gail Rice, spokeswoman for Central Maine Power.
She said thousands of people were at work on restoration efforts.
Earlier Friday afternoon, the New Hampshire Homeland Security and Emergency Management agency announced that several warming centers, which offer amenities including meals and sleeping areas, were open throughout the state.
Centers were open in cities and towns including Manchester, Auburn, Brookline, Farmington, Dover, New Boston, Rochester, Winchester, Allenstown, Deerfield, Londonderry, Nashua, and Tilton, the agency said.
“Tonight, temperatures are going to drop to the single digits,” the New Hampshire agency said Friday in a statement. “We want residents and visitors without power to know that shelters and warming stations are available. If you don’t have a safe heat source or a warm place to stay, please go to a shelter.”
The agency added that hundreds of extra utility crews are being provided to New Hampshire in an effort to restore power, some from as far away as Tennessee, Illinois, and Canada.
“Unfortunately, this is a multiday event and there will be homes without power through at least the weekend and likely into the early week,” the statement said.
On Friday, it was Eastern Massachusetts’ turn to get some snow.
The Weather Service said Friday afternoon that the heaviest snow fell in eastern Middlesex County and Essex County, where totals ranged from 2 to 4 inches. Between 1 and 3 inches fell in the Boston area and the South Shore, with a record-setting total in the Hub, according to the weather service. Boston saw 2.3 inches, the weather service said late Friday afternoon, barely topping the previous record for the day of 2.2 inches set in 1917.
Temperatures are expected to drop to the single digits across southern New Hampshire and parts of Central and Western Massachusetts. Temperatures should hold steady in the mid- to upper teens across most other areas overnight.
Across southern New England on Saturday, temperatures are expected to top out between the mid-20s and mid-30s,but could reach the upper 30s on the Cape and Islands, the Weather Service said.
A touch of warmth is on the horizon.
“A warm front crosses the area Saturday night, with a light wintry mix of precipitation possible,” the weather service said in an advisory issued late Friday afternoon. “Behind the front much milder weather is on tap for Sunday AND Monday,” when temperatures could rise to the high 40s or low 50s.
But more winter-like weather is close behind. A polar front is expected to sweep across the region later on Monday, bringing a return to cold weather on Tuesday, according to the advisory.
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