The storm that ripped through the area around Indian Pond in St. Albans on Monday was a macroburst, according to the National Weather Service.

The weather service sent a damage survey team to the area Wednesday morning to confirm what type of storm caused the extensive damage in St. Albans, in central Somerset County.

St. Albans was one of the towns hit hardest by the storm, which generated reports of golf ball-size hail and a tornado watch. Winds reached 90 mph, Tom Hawley, a meteorologist with the weather service in Gray, said Wednesday.

The damage covered an area about four miles wide and three miles long, Hawley said. Any width of damage greater than 2.5 miles is considered a macroburst, as opposed to a microburst. Since a tornado is caused by a rotational rather than straight-line winds, it would have caused trees to fall in different directions, according to Hawley.

Straight-line wind comes straight down from a thunderstorm in a macroburst, and spreads out in a straight line once it reaches the ground. The strong wind continues to blow in the direction the storm is moving – east, in this case, he said.

On Wednesday, Central Maine Power crews were out in force, replacing utility poles that had snapped in the storm and fixing power lines.

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“It doesn’t get much worse than this,” CMP lineman Aaron Cole said of the devastation.

Some who experienced Monday’s macroburst thought it was a tornado. A tornado hit the same area on July 15, 2014.

Hiram Weymouth, a St. Albans selectman, said he lost 30 trees around his house on Dinsmore Drive, which is a private road with two houses, he said. Fallen trees ripped his satellite dish off the roof and also damaged some metal trim. Another fallen tree hit a garage and made a 12-inch hole through the roof.

Most of the damage happened in the forest to the south of his house and the road, Weymouth said.

“We were lucky with that,” he said.

St. Albans Town Manager Rhonda Stark said Wednesday there are still trees and debris in the roads and the cleanup will take a while. She said there is still debris in town from the storm two years ago.

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The storm initially left more than 4,500 Central Maine Power customers without power, the majority in Somerset County. Many of those customers were still off-line Tuesday.

As of Wednesday morning, 114 were without power in Somerset County and 20 in Franklin County.

Madeline St. Amour can be contacted at 861-9239 or at:

mstamour@centralmaine.com

Twitter: madelinestamour


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