A line of storms that swept across Maine with winds of up to 70 mph ripped off part of a supermarket’s roof, knocked down trees and limbs, and left thousands of people in the dark Friday night.

Central Maine Power Co. crews were out in force after the first of the storms roared through southern and western Maine about 4:30 p.m. By 6 p.m., 25,000 CMP customers were without electricity.

The howling winds ripped part of the roof off a Hannaford supermarket in Jay, forcing the store to close for the night.

Wanda McDonald said she returned home after the storm to find a half-dozen trees down in her yard.

“There is no way this was just a thunderstorm. There’s just no way,” she told the Lewiston Sun Journal. “It got so dark so quick, and the rain was coming down so hard, you couldn’t even see.”

The worst of the storms peaked about 5 p.m., roughly the same time a Colby College exchange student drowned in Messalonskee Lake after a canoe capsized in rough waters. Then the storms continued eastward.

In Jay, McDonald’s home was in the line of fire when the first storms began rolling through. Her yard was full of debris afterward. In addition to toppled trees, there was a hole in the roof of her garage.

“It looks like a battlefield,” McDonald said. “And it all happened in just a few minutes.”

CMP crews planned to work through the night to restore electricity in parts of Oxford, Franklin, York and Cumberland counties.

Eric Schwibs, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Gray, said it was a fast-moving storm that had more wind than lightning. The weather service recorded gusts up to 70 mph.

“I think the big story will be all the outages and the cleanup,” Schwibs said. “There was widespread damage.”