FirstEnergy was reporting more than 247,000 customers without power in northeast Ohio, mostly in the Cleveland area, before dawn Tuesday. The utility also reported other scattered outages across the northern section of the state and down into Central Ohio. AEP Ohio reported around 6,000 interruptions in the Canton area and Central Ohio.

As of 8 a.m., power had been restored to nearly all of AEP’s central Ohio customers.

In Columbus, Tuesday morning commuters were dealing with snow-covered roadways, including this scene on Manchester Ave. on the city’s North side.

State emergency manage officials say the Ohio Department of Transportation has about 30 trucks clearing debris and felled trees from roads around Central Ohio.

High wind warnings are still in effect in much of central and eastern Ohio for much of Tuesday.

In northern Ohio, most shipping vessels on Lake Erie sought safe harbor from massive waves and wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour.

The storm has also cancelled and delayed many flights at all of the state’s largest airports.

The massive storm made landfall in New Jersey Monday night with 80 mph sustained winds, killing at least 16 people in seven states.

Two-thousand-eleven has seen remarkable natural disasters in the U.S.: tornadoes, Hurricane Irene, and wildfires. These catastrophic events have caused at least $23 billion in damage to insured properties. And the hurricane season is only at the half-way mark.

Blake Zitko, a spokesperson for State Farm Insurance, said disasters outside of Ohio will not affect local insurance premiums.

“Ohioans are not going to have to pay for a natural disaster that took place say on the east coast or the west coast. We only charge one for their premiums of the risks they absorb,” Zitko said.

Insurance companies such as State Farm, Nationwide and Grange Insurance all said insurance premiums are based on multi-year trends – not a single event or even a single year. Peter McMurtrie is the chief claims officer for Grange Insurance.

“It’s really been in the last five years that we’ve seen a fairly significant change in the weather patterns particularly in the Midwest and specifically here in Ohio,” McMurtrie said.

Columbus experienced a significant hail storm in 2006; then the half-billion dollar wrath of Hurricane Ike in 2008; another considerable wind storm in early 2009 and flooding this year.

“It is reasonable to assume that there will be increases in homeowner rates again this year, but I think those increases customers have been seeing over the last couple of years as carriers have been reacting to this multi-year trend in weather that has been occurring,” McMurtrie said.

But the insurance industry is a global one. And it has accrued more than $75 billion in losses this year. You’ll recall the Japan earthquake and tsunami and flooding in Australia earlier this year. Greg Locraft, Morgan Stanley’s lead analyst for property casualty insurance, said Ohio insurance policies will be affected by national and global catastrophes.

“That amount of loss gets spread across the globe. And what ends up happening is, insurance is a game of large numbers. Everybody individually pays a small amount of money into a pool. And that pool covers losses over the entire world,” Locraft said.

Insurance companies buy their own insurance to cover losses, just like property owners. But because of the massive losses this year, insurance companies are likely to see hikes in their own insurance rates. That too could be passed on to customers. But most agree, including Locraft, that will be minimal.

“It’s not the kind of thing that’s instantly going to flow through to consumers,” he said.

Bottom line, you can expect your insurance bottom line to go up this year; Locraft predicts anywhere from five to 15 percent.