The delicious saving grace is, the region, long known for its abundance of lobsters, found its dinner tables awash with them.

They owed the unexpected bounty to growing confusion about just where the ocean stops and the land starts.

"I've been a New Englander all my life," a swarthy resident of Bangor, Maine, said, as he took another bite of the state's famous delectation. "But I never thought I'd see that day that lobsters would show up for dinner of their own free will."

The only frustration the diners, determined to make the most of things, dealt with is how to heat up the oven when the kitchen is underwater.