Strong winds and driving rain brought down trees and knocked out power to tens of thousands of residents and businesses statewide Friday morning.
The Maine Emergency Management Agency warned that some residents would be in the dark into the weekend following the second powerful windstorm in two weeks.
Central Maine Power reported over 84,000 customers without power Friday afternoon, with most of the outages in Cumberland, York, Somerset, Kennebec and Lincoln counties. That number was still around 56,000 at 9:45 p.m. Later numbers weren’t available on the CMP website, which told users it was having “intermittent issues.”
Emera Maine had as many as 51,000 customers without electricity, more than 12,000 of them in Penobscot County. The utility reported that power had been restored to some areas, only to be knocked out again by another round of high winds.
Emera Maine, which still had 30,124 customers without power at 12:16 a.m. Saturday, said crews would work through the night but most of those customers would likely not have their power restored before morning.
Many parts of Maine were forecast to dip below freezing Friday night into Saturday morning.
The windstorm is the second this fall that has brought down tree limbs and power lines.
In Cumberland County, Brunswick was particularly hard hit, and more than 11,000 customers were still in the dark just before 7 p.m.
The outages also triggered a string of school cancellations or delays. In Brunswick, schools were delayed two hours Friday morning. In Orono, outages cancelled classes and campus activities at the University of Maine until 5 p.m.
The National Weather Service said a 74 mph gust was recorded Friday morning in Castine. Fire Chief Randy Stearns said both roads leading into town were closed for a time.
Wind gusts rose to 49 mph at the Portland International Jetport by 11 a.m., and hit 47 mph in Lewiston, but other areas got higher wind speeds, according to the National Weather Service in Gray. Winds reached 52 mph in Bangor by 6 a.m., and 59 mph in Bar Harbor. Farther inland, the winds in Fryeburg reached 43 mph, according to the weather service.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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