December 7th is also exactly two weeks away from the official start of winter in the Northern Hemispherebut don't tell that to the folks in the U.S. northeast because they're already there.A Nor'easter, the first such storm of the season arrived over the weekend.Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire appeared to be hit the hardest.Across those three states, more than 380,000 homes and businesses had lost electricity by Sunday morning.Some areas in the region recorded more than a foot of snow.It was described as heavy and wet snow and that can weigh down branches and make it more dangerous to drive.Wind gusts reached up to 68 miles per hour according to AccuWeather.The forecasting company also said that this storm met the definition of a bomb cyclone.That's named for a process called bomb genesis, when a weather intensifies very quickly in a very short amount of time.So what were some of the effects of all this?Power lines were knocked down. Roads were in bad shape. People were told to stay home.A CNN meteorologist says things could have been even worse though if temperatures had been a few degrees colder when the storm began.As utility crews were assessing the damage, the storm turned toward the eastern Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
