Utility crews continued to make progress restoring power Saturday, but more than 22,000 Maine customers remained in the dark late Saturday night after a windstorm Friday knocked down electric lines all over the state.

Central Maine Power said it expects to restore power to “99 percent” of affected customers by Sunday evening, but 14,165 in its service area remained without power Saturday night.

“With winds calm, the company anticipates no further storm-related outages, and is focused on clearing system damage and restoring power” to the remaining customers without electricity, the company said in a statement.

Shortly after 9 p.m., CMP’s website reported that the most outages were in Somerset, Franklin, Lincoln and Cumberland counties. The highest number was reported in Somerset County, where 3,428 customers were without power at 9:10 p.m.

About 1,100 customers were still without power in Cumberland County, including 348 in Harpswell, the town with the most outages in the county.

Emera Maine listed 8,317 outages across the northern and eastern parts of the state Saturday night, down from around 20,000 earlier in the day.

Friday morning’s windstorm was the second this fall to cause widespread outages. Last month, roughly 180,000 customers lost power, and numerous schools and businesses were forced to close.

Temperatures dipped to near freezing on Saturday morning, but are forecast to rise slightly through the weekend.

During the last round of outages, the city of Portland opened warming shelters for the thousands of residents without power; this time, however, only a couple of dozen CMP customers in the city were reported without service on Saturday morning. A total of 27 still remained out of power after 9 p.m. Saturday.


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