Winds that gusted to 50 mph Thursday caused power outages and blew down trees that fell on houses in Portland and Kittery. Winds were expected to die down Thursday night.
Some of the coldest temperatures of the season will arrive Friday night and last into Saturday before giving way to warmer temperatures Sunday, forecasters say.
“The cold starts Friday night and will be one of the coldest bouts of cold air we’ve had all winter,” said Bob Marine, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray. “But it’s not going to last very long. It will be a 24-hour cold blast.”
The weather service predicts temperatures will drop to about 10 degrees Friday night in Portland with wind chills as low as 6 below zero. It will be mostly sunny Saturday, with a high near 20 and gusts that could produce wind chills of 0 to 10 below on the coast and 10 to 20 below in the mountains.
The Portland area should warm up Sunday to about 32, and reach 39 degrees Monday.
Powerful winds Thursday knocked a tree onto a house on St. John Street in Portland, WCSH-TV reported. No injuries were reported, but the tree left several holes in the roof of the home, which is owned by an arborist.
In Kittery, Sgt. Chris Daggett said a tree fell on a kennel called “A Dog’s Tale” on Fernald Road around 4:30 p.m. A 70-foot pine tree caused considerable structural damage to the roof of the two-story dog day care facility, Daggett said.
Daggett said several people and dogs were inside the facility when the tree fell on the roof, but no people or dogs were injured.
The weather service posted on its Facebook page a chart of the strongest wind gusts recorded in Maine on Thursday.
Portland and Yarmouth reported gusts of 50 mph. Sanford and Cape Elizabeth reported gusts of 45 mph and South Bristol, 46 mph.
Mount Washington in New Hampshire recorded a gust of 108 mph. According to the Mount Washington Observatory, which is not affiliated with the weather service, wind speeds averaged 72 mph for most of the day. Those conditions combined to create a wind chill of 45 degrees below zero on the summit at 7 p.m.
High winds caused power outages throughout the day, with the peak coming Thursday afternoon when more than 8,000 Central Maine Power Co. customers reported they had lost electricity. The outages continued to decline late Thursday afternoon and evening.
By 5:15 p.m., just over 4,000 CMP customers were without power. Many of those were in York County, which at the time reported 1,804 outages. Lyman appeared to be the hardest hit town, with 825 outages.
By 7:30 p.m., outages had declined further with just under 2,000 CMP customers saying they were without power. Those outages were concentrated in York County, where 1,321 customers reported no electricity. Lebanon had 578 outages and York reported 404.
By 7:15 a.m. Friday, only 326 CMP customers were without power, primarily in southern York County.
The weather service put most of Maine under a wind advisory Thursday. A wind advisory means that sustained winds of 35 mph or wind gusts up to 57 mph can be expected. The wind advisory was lifted at 7 p.m., Marine said.
Dennis Hoey can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:
dhoey@pressherald.com
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