Many remain in dark in storm’s aftermath

Train derails, woman hit by falling tree

Nearly 300,000 people remained without power last night in the wake of the second nor’easter to hit Massachusetts in a week, and many of those outages are expected to last into the weekend, utility spokespeople said.

As of 7:15 p.m., more than 277,924 households and businesses had no electricity, mostly in Eastern Massachusetts, according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. The bulk of them — 223,230 — were National Grid customers, largely in the Merrimack Valley, MEMA said.

Another 57,694, mostly in Metrowest and Greater Boston, were Eversource customers, spokesman Michael Durand said.

Both utilities had brought in hundreds of power line and tree crews from around the country and Canada ahead of the storm, but the amount of damage caused by downed power lines makes it unlikely that electricity will be fully restored until at least this weekend.

“Last week it was 80 mph winds,” said Christine Milligan, a National Grid spokeswoman. “This week, it’s heavy, wet snow.”

Snow squalls tonight could bring another inch of snow. In Wednesday’s storm, the largest snowfalls were reported in Franklin County, with two feet of snow in the town of Monroe, according to the National Weather Service.

In Sudbury, a woman was injured shortly after 7 a.m. yesterday when a large section of a tree snapped and fell on her as she worked to clear snow on Fairbank Circle, police said. She was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston with serious but non-lifethreatening injuries, police said.

The snow and falling trees also wreaked havoc for many mass-transit commuters.

At about 6:30 a.m. yesterday, a train on the Lowell line derailed at low speed in Wilmington when it apparently struck a downed tree and for several hundred feet dragged a branch, which wedged into the switch on the track, said Tory Mazzola, a spokesman for commuter rail operator Keolis. No one was injured, Mazzola said, but the roughly 100 passengers on board had to be bused to the Anderson station in Woburn.

In all, about 100 fallen trees were cleared from the commuter rail network, he said, and about 10 trains were canceled.

STAFF PHOTOS, ABOVE, BY MARK GARFINKEL; LEFT, BY ANGELA ROWLINGS; TOP AND RIGHT, BY PATRICK WHITTEMORE

SNAP, CRACKLE, POP: Wednesday night’s storm left Dascomb Road in Andover blocked by a broken utility pole, top; snapped trees in Revere, above, and Boston, left, and weighed heavily in Newburyport, right.