I could be wrong but this is what I think actually happened with Comcast Xfinity internet shutdown across the country

 First of all, this was the biggest storm to hit the SF Bay Area this year (this rainy season) so there were winds 45 miles an hour up in the Santa Cruz mountains. 2nd the biggest bank of servers that actually run the Internet are actually in Silicon Valley just (over the Santa Cruz mountains from the ocean. I think the weather caused a chain reaction shutdown because of Satellite reception on the ridge of the Santa Cruz mountains. Then this caused shutdowns of Servers in the Silicon Valley and as the whole Bay Area shut down (which actually happened last night) it caused problems of other smaller server arrays as you move east from there. So, the chain reaction of problems for Comcast Xfinity began because of the storm and then bounced around the country as servers went down in Silicon Valley which confused servers south, north and East of Silicon Valley all the way to New Jersey and New York.