Wind, rain, heavy snow batter parts of New England, eastern Canada

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — A storm lashed parts of New England and eastern Canada on Saturday with heavy rain, snow and wind, leading to power outages and slick roads.

About 15,000 homes and businesses were without electricity at the height of the storm in Vermont, the hardest-hit U.S. state, and thousands of outages were reported elsewhere across the region, officials said.

“The snow is wet, heavy and slippery, which makes travel and restoration conditions tough,” said Mike Burke, chief of field operations at Green Mountain Power in Vermont.

A foot or more of snow was possible across higher elevations of northern New England, and wind gusts as high as 50 to 60 mph were expected along the Maine coast, said Michael Clair, of the National Weather Service in Maine.

Gusts of 70 mph were recorded at the Isle of Shoals, about 2 miles off New Hampshire, and New Hampshire’s Mount Washington recorded a gust of 118 mph at the summit, the weather service said.

Much of eastern Canada was pounded with steady snowfall.

Locations that didn’t get snow could see 1 1/2 to 2 inches of rain, Clair said.