When the temperature dropped down to just 38 degrees inside their log cabin home after they lost electricity around 8:15 Saturday night, Nicholas Wourms and his mom did what they could to stay warm overnight, donning extra clothing, adding extra blankets to their beds, firing up oil lamps and stoking the fireplace, though those steps together still proved inadequate to heat the place up much.
“It dipped down, with the wind blowing through the cracks (in the log cabin’s walls) to around 38 or 39 at one point,” Wourms said Sunday at the Wayne General Store, where he’d gone seeking a hot meal to help warm up after their cold night in the converted camp on Windecker Way, between Lord Road and Pocasset Lake in Wayne. “So I just put on extra blankets and clothes and sort of hunkered down.”
They were among the nearly 40,000 Central Maine Power customers to lose power during the Saturday evening into Sunday morning storm. In a news release CMP said more than 56,000 customers lost power. The company expects to work on restoring power into Monday.
Wourms said he knows things could be worse. Because just about one year ago an early morning storm on Oct. 30, 2017, blew through Maine, knocking out power for about a half-million Mainers.
The Wourms’ log home lost power for eight days in that storm, with a number of trees falling down on the electrical line that leads to them, where, he said, they are the last building on the line.
“I was worried this would be an extensive power outage like last year,” Wourms said. “That was pretty bad.”
He said he’d been told by CMP Sunday morning somebody was on the way to fix their power, so he hoped to have electricity back soon.
CMP linemen, sometimes accompanied by tree workers, worked to restore power Sunday. The number of remaining CMP customers without power dwindled throughout the day, from more than 37,000 around 7:30 a.m. to just under 20,000 by 2 p.m. A CMP news release said outages peaked early Sunday morning with 38,000 customers without power.
Outages were spread across CMP’s coverage area. Early Sunday morning 6,800 CMP customers were without power in Franklin County, 3,000 in Kennebec County, 3,600 in Lincoln County and 5,500 in Somerset County. By around 5 p.m. 13,000 CMP customers were still without power according to a news release from the company.
Somerset County had many reports of trees down on wires and trees in the roadway late Saturday and early Sunday because of the storm, with reports slowing down around 2 a.m. Sunday, according to a Somerset County Sheriff’s dispatcher.
The towns of Skowhegan and Madison got hit pretty hard with a lot of trees and wires down and fire and highway departments responded, he said. Fairfield was one Somerset town that did not report problems.
A Waterville police dispatcher said Sunday she knew of no reports of trees and/or wires down because of the storm.
Two CMP linemen stringing line off Maranacook Shore Road in Readfield, with the help of Lucas Tree workers who worked, about 500 feet into the woods removing fallen trees from power lines Sunday morning got a “thank you” from a passing jogger.
Janet Whitten, whose home didn’t yet have power restored, saw the CMP truck and ran up to it to thank the workers.
“I could hug those guys,” she said.
Though, she didn’t.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Derek Schroeter said the highest wind gust overnight in Augusta was 41 miles per hour.
The storm also brought more rain to central Maine, where, as of Sunday afternoon, 2.37 inches of rain had fallen since Friday.
That rain, combined with storm drains clogged with fallen, wind-blow leaves, resulted in some street flooding around Augusta.
Augusta Police Sgt. Eric Lloyd said there were some temporarily flooded spots around the city including Hospital Street by Second Avenue and Northern Avenue by Augusta Fuel Company where there was about a foot of standing water until public works employees came to clear out the drain.
“Public works was awesome, they had a busy day,” clearing drains of leaves in the wind and rain, Lloyd said. “All our services were in use, it was a rough day.”
At least four trees fell into roadways in Augusta during the storm, on Pleasant, Chapel, Canal and Drew streets. False security and fire alarms, caused by the wind, were frequent.
And a power outage on the east side of the Kennebec River also knocked power out to city traffic signals. To help control traffic, officers were staged at intersections on North Belfast Avenue Extension and Bangor Street, and Route 3 and Riverside Drive.
Lloyd said officers, obviously out in the wind and rain, directed traffic by hand for about six hours, until almost 11:30 Saturday night. He said they thought about putting up temporary stop signs, instead, but knew those would just blow over. So they brought in some portable lighting to shine on the officers who worked the intersections into the night.
The wind mellowed gradually on an occasionally sunny Sunday.
Monday, according to Schroeter, the forecast for the Augusta area called for increasing clouds with rain showers breaking out around 8 p.m. and continuing through Tuesday.
Staff writer Amy Calder contributed to this report.
Keith Edwards — 621-5647
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