MA Power Outages: 230,000+ In The Dark Tuesday

The number of Massachusetts homes without power has dipped below 200,000 Tuesday evening. As of 6:32 p.m., the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said 196,270 were in the dark - a daunting number but one that falls well short of the damage done in the previous two storms. The storm, of course, isn't nearly over yet.

The North Shore, Merrimack Valley, and Central Mass., largely escaped a significant number of outages. This round is located squarely where forecasters said it would be: In Plymouth County and along the Cape and Islands, where wind gusts topped 70 miles per hour.

Some towns in the area have 94-100 percent of homes without power. In Dennis, more than 16,000 customers are without power, while more than 10,000 in both Harwich and Sandwich are without power.

The storm was officially dubbed a blizzard by the National Weather Service in Boston, Falmouth, Plymouth, Martha's Vineyard, and Hyannis. The NWS warned that area in particular "of concern where a combination of heavy accumulating, wet, pasty snow along with strong to damaging winds could lead to greater impact with respect to downed limbs, power lines."

Despite a storm-battered power infrastructure, the NWS said Monday the outages were not expected to be as widespread as the past couple storms. That's big news for a state that has seen more than 800,000 homes lose power this month.

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(Photo by Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images)