Image: David Shankbone. "New York skyline when half the city was in blackout due to a power failure during Hurricane Sandy. Midtown, with the Empire State Building, is in the background with the darkened East Village and other parts of downtown in the foreground." Wikimedia
"A tenfold increase in major power outages (those affecting more than 50,000 customer homes or businesses), between the mid-1980s and 2012. Some of the increase was driven by improved reporting. Yet even since 2003, after stricter reporting requirements were widely implemented, the average annual number of weather-related power outages doubled. Non-weather related outages also increased during that time, but weather caused 80 percent of all outages between 2003-2012."