Snow, a blast of cold air and wind gusts powerful enough to knock power out are heading into Maine Thursday and Friday.

The fast-moving front will hit the state Thursday night and be gone by Friday during the day, but winds, snow and cold air have the potential to cause more outages just 10 days after a wind and rainstorm left nearly 500,000 Mainers without electricity.

“It’s going to come through here like a freight train,” said Andy Pohl, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray.

Portland could experience wind gusts of up to 40 mph, strong enough to cause scattered power outages. Pohl said it will turn bitterly cold on Friday as well with wind chill values dipping into the teens and 20s.

“After the warmest October on record in Portland, now we are seeing this,” Pohl said. Portland’s average temperature for October was 56.1 degrees, breaking the record of 55.3 degrees set in 1947.

Southern Maine should not see any accumulation of snow. However, the mountains and northern areas of the state could get 1 to 2 inches.

Emera Maine, which provides electricity to northern Maine, warned its customers Wednesday night that wind gusts reaching 50 mph could knock out power. Combined with the expected snow, Emera Maine said, it is prepared for more outages.

Trees and limbs are more susceptible to falling since the damaging winds of the Oct. 30 storm and the company is factoring that into its preparation, Emera Maine said in a statement.

“We recognize how difficult recent outages have been on our customers,” said Rob Belliveau, vice president for engineering and operations. “We want them to know we’re making arrangements to ensure our response to any outages this weekend is handled safely and quickly. Our employees are fully committed to restoring customers should strong winds bring more trees down onto lines.”

Dennis Hoey can be contacted at 791-6365 or at:

dhoey@pressherald.com

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