© NASA/GOES-East
More than 800,000 customers in 14 states lost electricity as an intense line of thunderstorms swept moved across the eastern U.S. on Halloween knocking down trees and power lines.As of 4 p.m. ET, more than 420,000 still remained without power in Connecticut, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, according to poweroutage.us, which monitors U.S. utilities systems.
The Maine Emergency Management Agency warned that some residents will likely be in the dark into the weekend following winds that topped 70 mph in the coastal town of Castine.
The Central Maine Power, the state's largest utility, was getting help from crews for other utilities, including some in Canada, and was trying to arrange even more help, but was hampered by damage all over the region.
The damaging winds were spawned by a cold front colliding with unusually warm and humid air in the east, including temperatures in the 70s in New York City and Washington, D.C., according to AccuWeather.com.
The 14 states were clustered in the Great Lakes, Northeast and mid-Atlantic areas that felt the brunt of the storm as it rolled east late Thursday and early Friday.
Comment: There has been a huge surge in underground urban fires in the last decade or so.
This, for example, happened in England in 2015: Film footage shows fireball exploding from underneath street in Shirley, UK
In 2014, the British govt suggested that the increasingly extreme levels of rainfall was to blame, with flooding causing short-circuiting of electrical cables.