PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • January 4, 2023
While the Ice Storm of 1998 was a seminal event, extreme weather conditions are becoming more common in a warming world, spawning more heavy wet snow and strong wind gusts. That reality was underscored late last month with back-to-back snow and wind storms that cut off power to hundreds of thousands of homes. Today, the infrastructure that makes up distribution and transmission systems at Maine’s largest utility are becoming more robust, engineered to handle worsening weather. That’s one legacy of the ice storm, but it’s an ongoing and costly process.