12:45 p.m.

Several areas of the Lakes Region were particularly hard-hit by Tropical Storm Irene, including Edy Cove on Sebago Lake’s Jordan Bay in the town of Raymond, where boats washed ashore and docks ripped free.

Additional Photos

A Freeport Department of Public Works crew cleans up branches downed by Tropical Storm Irene on Flying Point Road today. John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

A downed tree on Route 302 in Windham this morning near the Raymond town line.

Almost a dozen trees fell along the shore and one took down power lines. Lawns in the area of summer cottages were strewn with pine branches and neighbors were out Monday cleaning up.

“It blew for 12 hours. It was just unbelievable. My floor was shaking,” said Suzanne Williams, who watched the storm with her husband Tom. The couple lives most of the year in Southport, North carolina, near where Hurricane Irene first made landfall in the U.S.

The storm hit hard there, but there are few trees. “Our house there was fine. Everybody is out playing golf and here we are up here,” she said, gesturing with hands protected by green garden gloves as she took a break from cleaning debris from her lawn.

Ron and Jane Stephens live most of the year in Yarmouth and summer in Edy Cove. They were at a friend’s for a hurricane party in Falmouth when they got a neighbor’s call warning them about the damage near the lake’s shore. They stayed away until this morning, when they discovered a tree had toppled onto their porch.

Peter Hoffman, of Boston, and his wife Carol were watching the storm’s fury from their summer cottage and saw their boat get washed up onto his front lawn.

“Nothing was catastrophic,” Hoffman said of the damage. “It’s just a mess.”

11:58 a.m.

The timing and location of Tropical Storm Irene helped some communities cope with what was forecast to be a much more severe hit.

“The storm ended up going bout 60 miles west of what had originally been forecast so that made the folks in western and southern Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont get several inches of rain,” on top of other storm impacts,” said Nicole Clegg, spokeswoman for the city of Portland. “We ended up not having to deal with that.”

The storm’s heavy rains contributed to flooding, road damage and many uprooted trees in western Maine and the rest of New England but the bulk of Maine was spared for the most part, though thousands of customers still lost power.

The storm also hit early enough in the day Sunday that public works crews were able to begin clearing debris before nightfall even as the storm was still moving out of the area.

“The advantage of having a storm hit during the day is that as things fall and things are discovered, they come in at this moderate pace,” Clegg said. “If it had hit overnight, as people woke up at 6 or 7 in the morning, we would have been flooded with calls.”

10:47 a.m.

Hundreds of line crews are out restoring power to those left in the dark due to the storm.

Central Maine Power’s total of outages is back up to 183,000 as customers continue to report new interruptions this morning, but the utility expects those reports to drop off as high winds ease later in the day.

Bangor Hydro-Electric’s latest count was about 21,000 outages.

8:09 a.m.

The storm wiped out power to large numbers of customers, and rural towns could face days before it gets restored.

“Probably 90 percent of the town is without power,” said Andy Ward, emergency dispatcher in the York County town of Buxton. “West Buxton seemed to get hit more than downtown,” he said.

The damage didn’t appear severe on his way into work at 7 a.m., he said.

“It was just a bunch of branches and leaves in the road, not a lot of catastrophic stuff,” Ward said.

7:51 a.m.

Downed trees and power lines are leading to cumbersome detours in rural areas.

Dispatchers at the Cumberland County regional communicatons center reported said there are scores of secondary roads that have been reported as closed or impassable.

Naples Town Manager Derik Goodine said that the western section of his Lakes Region town was hit hard, with many large trees uprooted, and residents on several side roads are forced to go 10 miles out of their way to get to Route 302. Even some of those roads that are passable are down to one lane, he said.

Raymond also was hit hard by the storm, with numerous roads closed and many people wihtout power, dispatchers said.

The loss of electricity is more problematic for people who need it to get water from wells than for people who are served by municipal water supplies, Goodine noted.

7:25 a.m.

Many Mainers faced cold showers as they readied for work Monday, with power cut to a wide swath of homes, and emergency officials are now assessing how much damage Irene left behind.

“Obviously we have a couple overwhelming issues. One is the power outage, which is significant. The other is what appears to be some major road damage in Franklin and Somerset counties,” Lynette Miller, spokeswoman for the Maine Emergency Management Agency.

“The theme today is damage assesment and also figuring out a game plan for recovery,” she said.

Route 27 in Carrabasset Valley, a major corridor for tourists and commerce coming down from the north, is shut down in spots and forcing traffic to take a wide detour, she said. The Maine Department of Transportation will be assessing the damage this morning and determining what can be done to reopen the road. Oxford County also had several roads damaged by the storm.

“Western Maine really got the bulk of the rain and they got a lot of rain in a very short period of time,” said Miller.

Miller said counties will determine whether any of the 15 shelters opened over night need to remain open for people who have lost power or if there are better ways to care for the people who need somewhere to stay.

“The good news is it’s August and not January,” she said. “The issues are obviously how long the restoration is going to take and there are folks that are more vulnerable to power outages, people who might depend on electricity for medical  equipment.”

The Saco River in Maine does not appear to offer any threat of flooding she said, though officials in New Hampshire have issued a warning about the river in Conway.

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