Record weekend rainfall washed out roads, flooded basements and caused minor evacuations, but authorities expressed relief Sunday that rivers and other major state waterways stayed within their banks.

With as much as 6 inches of rain having fallen on parts of the state over the weekend, the National Weather Service is maintaining a flood warning until this afternoon, but most storm drains and water systems seemed to handle the deluge, officials said Sunday.

“We’re not expecting any Maine rivers to go over their banks,” said Mark Turner, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou. “This [flooding] is pretty limited to small streams, brooks, and places with poor drainage. They [levels] go up and down very quickly with the small streams and brooks.”

In Bridgewater, rains sparked a flash flood on U.S. Route 1 when a beaver dam let go at about 8:30 a.m. Sunday, knocking out a garage bay door at the local fire department and flooding the roadway with about 3 feet of water.

Officials said it was fortunate no people were around when the water surged across Bridgewater’s Main Street, as the force of the floodwaters could have caused serious harm. Danny Rideout, highway crew supervisor for the Department of Transportation in Mars Hill, noted the unexpected nature of the event: Just 15 minutes before the dam broke, he said, a Maine State Police trooper, who later helped with cleanup efforts, drove through Bridgewater and saw no signs of flooding.

According to Rideout, the flash flood occurred when a large beaver dam on Dead Brook collapsed, sending a week’s worth of backed-up water – about 3 acres wide and 20 feet deep – and debris surging about 600 yards downstream toward a small bridge on Bridgewater’s Main Street.

With a crash that one resident said sounded like thunder, the debris hit the bridge and clogged it, sending water across Route 1. Rideout said the wall of water smashed out the center door at the Bridgewater Fire Department and swirled into the building, filling the station with about 2 feet of water and sending boots and equipment downstream. Firefighters were able to recover “pretty much everything,” Rideout said.

Local firefighters responded quickly, calling other volunteer firefighters to the scene and moving the trucks out of the station and onto Route 1. Rideout said they began rerouting traffic south of the flooding down Boundary Line Road, onto Tannery Road, and back onto Route 1 north of the flooding.

Ralph Kinney, Bridgewater road commissioner, and firefighters immediately began cleaning up the water. Rideout said that Doug Bradstreet, a volunteer firefighter who owns a construction company, brought his excavator to the scene to clean debris out from under the bridge because DOT officials “knew we couldn’t get in with our backhoe.” Officials with the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department, the Maine State Police and the DOT in Mars Hill assisted with the cleanup and directing traffic.

Meanwhile, the Bangor area appeared to have emerged from the weekend’s rain unscathed.

“It was a little inconvenient, but we haven’t had any major issues with it,” said Dan Lawrence, a dispatcher at the state police barracks in Orono. “It doesn’t seem like it’s done a giant bunch of damage up here. People have just have to slow down a bit [while driving]. You can get through the waters.”

“We haven’t had any calls or complaints this weekend,” Eric Archer, a Bangor public works dispatcher, said Sunday. “All’s good and that’s good.”

The wettest spots included:

. Pine Grove Campground on Route 11 in East Millinocket, where two families were evacuated shortly before 9 a.m. Sunday because of rapidly rising waters.

“I told them that they were going to be in high land with no way to get off if they didn’t evacuate,” East Millinocket Fire Chief Les Brown said Sunday. “The water rose about 3 feet in a matter of about an hour and a half. The water was across their exit so they could not have left the property if [they] didn’t leave when they did, at least not without using a boat.”

. U.S. Route 2 between Milford and Old Town, where bridge construction has contributed to road flooding problems that made the road all but impassible for most of Sunday.

. Route 11 in Township 4 Range 9; Bond Road in Corinna; Route 143 in Etna; Bates Street in Millinocket; and Bryant Road near Bear Hill Road in Dover, all of which were closed or overrun by flooding for parts of Sunday.

. In Limestone, Route 223 flooded near Noyes Brook and water covered Wrightville Road in Ashland.

Saturday’s rains set one-day rainfall records for Oct. 15 for Caribou, Bangor and Portland. Through the first 15 days of October, Portland had 10.74 inches of rain, making it the third-wettest October on record – with 16 days to go.

The wettest October was in 1996, with 16.86 inches, while a normal October has 4.4 inches, according to the weather service. So far this year, Portland has had 49.84 inches of rain, making it the fourth-wettest January-through-October stretch on record. The record for the 10-month period is 54.61 inches in 1979.

But for the most part, the state was spared from major flooding and storm damage.

“It appears we have dodged a major bullet and will not be impacted like our neighbors to the south,” said Charlie Jacobs of the Maine Emergency Management Agency.

The storm system appeared to be wrapping itself south to north around Aroostook County and back toward northwestern Maine.

Forecasters said a strong low-pressure system over New Brunswick produced high winds across western and southern Maine on Sunday, with sustained winds of 25 mph to 35 mph and occasional gusts of 50 mph.

BDN writers Rachel Rice, Diana Graettinger and Dawn Gagnon and The Associated Press contributed to this report.