Lightning, hail revisit Aroostook

loading...

Aroostook County again dealt with bouts of severe hail, rain and lightning Saturday, a day after being pummeled by a storm that ripped trees out of the ground, knocked down power lines and disrupted business.

Meanwhile, residents in the Skowhegan area of Somerset County, particularly those around Wessurunsett Lake in Madison, were deep into cleanup efforts Sunday after severe lightning and windstorms Friday.

Dozens of homes, including an entire neighborhood in Madison, were heavily damaged. Hundreds of trees were ripped from the ground or splintered, docks were turned upside down, and Central Maine Power Co. had to replace poles and restring wires to nearly a mile of Laney Road in Madison. At least five vehicles were crushed and several boats were heavily damaged or sunk.

Towns in the St. John Valley had the most significant damage in Saturday’s storm, with several people throughout the area reporting hail damage to vehicles, Leann Allegretto, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Caribou, said Sunday.

Many towns had golf ball-size hail, including Van Buren, Grand Isle, St. Agatha and St. Francis. There were no confirmed reports of tornadoes in The County, the weather service said.

In Fort Kent on Saturday, law enforcement personnel fielded reports of hail that damaged parked cars. Some vehicles had significant damage, according to Police Chief Kenneth Michaud.

Michaud was traveling on St. John Road in Fort Kent when the hail started falling. The chief said the pellets were coming “straight down” and bouncing off the pavement, taking leaves off the trees as they fell.

“On the other end of town, I met people who told me to go look at the hospital,” he said, referring to Northern Maine Medical Center. “When I got there, some of the employees were outside and some had dings on their vehicles from the hail.”

Damage also was done to vehicles at Martin Ford on East Main Street, according to both Michaud and Allegretto.

“They proclaimed the entire parking lot ruined,” Allegretto said. “The cars in the parking lot had windows taken out by the hail, and there were dents and dings in them as well.”

Lightning also reportedly struck the steeple of the St. Gerard-Mount Carmel Church in Grand Isle and briefly set the structure on fire, but no significant damage was reported.

Madawaska Police Chief Ron Pelletier said Saturday evening that police also had received reports that hail had damaged cars in the area, but no accidents were reported.

Hail also fell in Caribou, but the Caribou Police Department received no reports of damage.

Quarter-size hail was reported in Crouseville and Fort Fairfield, according to the National Weather Service.

Saturday’s weather was less extreme in southern Aroostook, with lightning and rain passing through the area relatively quickly.

Utility crews were at work for much of the day restoring electricity to homes and businesses left in the dark by Friday’s powerful line of thunderstorms that blew down an old barn in Caribou and ripped the roof off the Fraser Paper mill in Masardis, where a funnel cloud was reported.

Robert Higgins, director of the Somerset County Emergency Management Agency, estimated that damage and recovery from Friday’s storm could tally $500,000 to $1 million.

“I had never seen such sharp lightning, so intense, so bright,” Higgins said. One Skowhegan woman was struck by lightning but was treated at Redington Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan and released, he said.

A home on West Ridge Road in Cornville was struck by lightning that ripped off a corner of the house. Lighting struck and killed three cows on Snakeroot Road in Pittsfield.

Higgins said many residents around Wessurunsett Lake reported seeing “a funnel-like cloud that actually began drawing water off the lake.” He said that although many of them believed a tornado had struck, the National Weather Service determined it was a wind shear, or microburst. Higgins said winds had been predicted at 70 mph but could have been double that.

“I live two miles away from the affected area [in Madison], and the wind picked up my well house and tossed it 40 feet,” he said. “My lawn chairs were shattered when they were bashed into the side of my metal building.”

Some residents estimated the entire windstorm took less than two minutes to pass through.

“This was simply amazing,” Higgins said. “I saw a two-by-six off a roof impaled a foot and a half into the ground. Trees that were 3 feet in diameter and 60 feet tall were uprooted or shattered.” One seasonal camp, he said, had its kitchen completely torn off by the wind.

“In just that one neighborhood in Madison, I bet we lost between 100 and 200 very large trees,” Higgins said.

Cleanup and recovery will continue today, he said, since cable and telephone utilities have not even been able to reach the area.

Reports continued to come in Sunday about additional damage from Friday night’s storm.

Dispatchers at the Maine State Police barracks in Orono lost radio communication with troopers around 8 p.m. Friday after a lightning strike.

Dispatchers used cell phones and text pagers to communicate with troopers for a little more than an hour before the service was restored, dispatcher Chad LaBree said. Dispatchers could hear troopers’ scanner conversations, but could not respond or direct the approximately 10 troopers patrolling Penobscot, Piscataquis, Washington and Hancock counties, he said.

“I wouldn’t say [tension] was high,” LaBree said. “We are trained for that type of thing to happen.”

Few homes remained without power Sunday after Friday’s storm. At the storm’s peak, Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. reported more than 8,600 Penobscot County homes without power. CMP also reported significant outages in central and midcoast regions of the state.

By Sunday evening, Bangor Hydro’s Web site listed outages in only Millinocket and Sedgwick, while CMP’s site noted outages in Corinna, Newport and St. Albans.

Though Friday night’s storm brought lightning and rain to Washington and Hancock counties, authorities received few reports of damage in those areas. There was a report of a lightning strike that damaged a home in Trenton, but most areas had only power outages. Some of those outages lasted into Saturday as crews worked to repair the lines.

BDN staff writers Toni-Lynn Robbins and Rich Hewitt and The Associated Press contributed to this report.