At least 6 killed in deadly storm, thousands still without power

At least six people have been killed in a ferocious storm that hammered the Northeast with powerful winds, relentless rain and historic flooding.

The nor'easter moved out to sea Saturday, but not before it knocked out power to more than 900,000 customers from the mid-Atlantic to New England.

"People in these homes need to plan for a prolonged outage," Kurt Schwartz, director of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, said Friday night. "This is a multi-day restoration event."

By late Saturday the number of customers without electricity had been reduced to around 607,000, with more than 250,000 of those in Massachusetts.

The flooding is "the worst that we've seen in years," said Capt. John Dougan of the Quincy, Massachusetts Police Department, which had carried out more than 250 rescues between 8 a.m. Friday and midmorning Saturday. "We're seeing homes underwater, their basements were flooded out, the electricity was off."

Powerful Nor'easter will pull away from the Atlantic coast tonight and Sunday. Gusty winds and coastal flooding will diminish from the Mid Atlantic to southern New England.

— NWS (@NWS) March 4, 2018

The National Weather Service said "gusty winds and coastal flooding" would diminish as the storm pulled away from the Atlantic coast but emergency officials urged residents on higher ground to stay indoors, even after the storm pushed out.

About 92% of customers in Scituate, Massachusetts -- home to an estimated 18,000 residents, according to the US Census Bureau -- were without electricity Saturday afternoon, according to James Boudreau, the town's administrator. He said then that it would be 72 hours before power was fully restored.

Nearly 15 million people were still under a coastal flooding warning Saturday afternoon.

The storm morphed Friday into a "bomb cyclone" after undergoing a rapid pressure drop known as bombogenesis. It slammed much of the Northeast with heavy snow and rain, prompting significant coastal flooding and hurricane-force gusts in New England.

Winds along parts of the Massachusetts coast that whipped in excess of 90 miles per hour are due to ease Saturday, CNN forecasters said.

The storm also dumped heavy snow from Ohio to New England and into upstate New York, where more than 3 feet was recorded.

(CNN)