New England Storm Leaves Hundreds of Thousands Without Power; Officials Monitor New Hampshire Dam as Water Levels Slowly Fall

Crews worked to restore power to hundreds of thousands of customers who have been in the dark for more than a day after a coastal storm clobbered New England. Meanwhile, officials continued to closely watch at least one dam in the region for the possibility of breaches or failures as water levels slowly lowered.

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As of 7 a.m. EDT Tuesday morning, nearly 850,000 homes and businesses were still powerless in the wake of the storm, according to PowerOutage.us. Nearly half of those outages were in Maine, where more than half a million customers were in the dark at the height of the outages.

According to the Associated Press, the number of outages quickly approached that of the great ice storm of 1998, which knocked out power to 700,000 homes and businesses. Maine Gov. Paul LePage declared a state of emergency on Monday, which will allow utility workers to work longer hours than normally allowed, according to the Portland Press Herald.

Central Maine Power, which provides electricity to a majority of the state, said this was the largest outage event in the company's 118-year history.

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The storm underwent bombogenesis, meaning that it rapidly intensified, increasing the strength of winds near the center.