PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The National Hurricane Center downgraded Hurricane Lee to a post-tropical cyclone, but millions of people along the New England coast and eastern Canada remained under a storm watch and warning Saturday amid the threat of hurricane-force and torrential winds. rain.
Severe conditions were forecast as a possibility in parts of Massachusetts and Maine and hurricane conditions could affect the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where the storm was expected to make landfall later on Saturday.
The storm was located about 185 miles (365 kilometers) southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and about 160 miles (355 kilometers) south-southeast of Eastport, Maine, on Saturday at 8 a.m. EDT. It was moving north at 25 mph (41 kph) with maximum wind gusts of 80 mph (129 kph).
States of emergency were declared in Massachusetts and Maine, the most forested state in the country, where the soil was saturated and trees weakened by heavy summer rains.
There were about 20,000 power outages from Massachusetts to Maine early Saturday morning. There were reports of downed trees in Hancock and Washington counties in eastern Maine, according to Todd Foisy, a meteorologist with the Maine National Weather Service.
“We have a long way to go and we’re already seeing downed trees and power outages,” Foisy said Saturday.
Peak gusts are projected to be 70 mph (113 kph) off the eastern Maine coast, but there will be gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph) in a swath more than 400 miles wide, from Maine’s Moosehead Lake towards the east until the end. the ocean, he said.
Cruise ships found shelter in berths in Portland, while lobstermen in Bar Harbor, Maine, and elsewhere pulled their expensive traps out of the water and dragged their boats inland, leaving some ports looking like ghost towns on Friday.
Lee already hit the US Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Bermuda before turning north and the strong storm surge is likely to cause “life-threatening surf and rip current conditions” in the US and Canada, according to the hurricane center.
Parts of the Maine coast could see waves up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) high breaking, causing erosion and damage, and strong gusts will cause power outages, said Louise Fode, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Maine. Up to 5 inches (12 centimeters) of rain was forecast for eastern Maine, where a flash flood watch was in effect.
But even as they hunkered down and prepared, New Englanders didn’t seem worried about the possibility of violent weather.
In Maine, where people are accustomed to damaging northeastern winter storms, some dismissed Lee’s arrival as something like those storms only without the snow.
“There will be huge white waves accompanied by 50 to 60 mph winds. It will be pretty entertaining,” Bar Harbor lobsterman Bruce Young said Friday. Still, he had his ship moved to the local airport, saying that prevention is better than cure.
On Long Island, lobster trader Steve Train finished removing 200 traps from the water on Friday. Train, who is also a firefighter, was going to wait out the storm on Casco Bay Island.
He wasn’t worried about staying there during the storm. “Not a bit,” she said.
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In Canada, Ian Hubbard, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canadian Hurricane Centre, said Lee will be nowhere near the severity of the remnants of Hurricane Fiona, which swept homes into the ocean and left people without power. most of two provinces and swept a woman into the sea a year ago.
But it was still a dangerous storm. Kyle Leavitt, director of the New Brunswick Emergency Management Organization, urged residents to stay home, saying, “Nothing good can come from watching the big waves and how strong the wind really is.”
Destructive hurricanes are relatively rare this far north. The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 brought gusts of up to 300 kph (186 mph) and sustained winds of 195 kph (121 mph) at Blue Hill Observatory in Massachusetts. But there haven’t been such powerful storms in recent years.
The region learned the hard way with hurricane irene In 2011, that damage is not always limited to the coast. Irene, downgraded to a tropical storm, still caused more than $800 million in damage in Vermont.
Sharp and Whittle reported from Portland. Associated Press writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed.
