The storm bringing downpours and strong winds to the Boston area and across New England is knocking out power for thousands of people Friday morning.
According to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, there were more than 35,000 customers without power across the Bay State as of 6:30 am Just an hour earlier, fewer than 4,500 outages had occurred.
Power outages were also widespread in New England. In Connecticut, more than 50,000 people lost power. In New Hampshire, more than 20,000 customers were in the dark at 6:30 am And nearly 15,000 Central Maine Power customers had also lost power.
Highlighting another high wind hazard, a tree fell on a home in North Andover early Friday morning. No one was hurt, officials say, although power outages were reported in the city.
In Newmarket, New Hampshire, firefighters reported that a tree had fallen on power lines on Pine Street, closing the road until Eversource could make repairs.
Eversource and National Grid announced before the storm that they would mobilize crews from across the country to help fix the outages.
Up to 70,000 Massachusetts electricity customers could be without power for two days or more due to damaging winds and heavy rains that are expected to bring down trees and limbs, Eversource’s president of electrical operations Craig Hallstrom said this week. . Connecticut could face up to 125,000 outages, the company said at a separate event Wednesday.
The worst of the storm in terms of wind and rain is expected on Friday morning. While that will go away by Friday afternoon, cold air will flood New England, potentially causing roads to freeze.