PORTLAND, Maine — More than 175,000 Mainers were still without power Friday night, but the numbers dropped significantly throughout the day Saturday.
The nor'easter Thursday dropped more than a foot of heavy, wet snow and whipped up strong winds that combined to knock out power lines up and down the state.
As of 4 p.m. Saturday, 101,528 Central Maine Power customers remained without power. Versant customers were down to double-digit outage numbers by 4 p.m., at 70, split between coastal Washington and Hancock counties.
At the height of the storm, more than 375,000 customers lost power across the state.
Versant said most of the remaining outages should be fixed by 10 p.m. Friday, "with the exception of customers located in remote areas such as camps, camp roads and islands."
A CMP spokesperson said Friday that most of the company's outages should be fixed by Sunday, while full restoration is expected early next week.
"Restoration efforts continue in the wake of yesterday’s powerful storm with nearly 175,000 impacted customers restored," CMP said on its website at 5:30 p.m. Friday. "With hundreds of crews deployed, we will work around the clock until everyone has their lights back on."
Warming centers were open across Maine through the weekend.
No serious injuries from the storm were reported. There were dozens of crashes across the state and in Wells, an 80-foot pine tree snapped and pierced through a home in Wells.
Some communities like Harpswell completely lost power during the storm. Many York County communities were also hit hard.
"The storm has created near-blizzard conditions, and road and work conditions across our service area continue to be hazardous," a CMP spokesperson told NEWS CENTER Maine. "Given the scale of damage we are seeing, at this time we do anticipate this to be a multiple-day restoration effort, lasting into early next week for some customers in hardest hit areas."
The company said it had 450 line crews and 250 tree crews prepared for the storm and started calling in 250 external crews to help with the power restoration effort. A spokesperson said Friday that it was calling in another wave of out-of-state crews for the weekend, which brings the total to more than 1,000 crews.
CMP spokesperson Jon Breed said most customers should get power back by Saturday or Sunday.
"We're making good progress," Breed said. "We're going to continue working through the weekend. I think we're going to make a lot of good progress this weekend. So come tomorrow, we'll be able to give you a good sense of whether or not we'll have this wrapped up Sunday night, Monday."
He said they received more than 1,200 "emergency calls," such as trees and power lines blocking roads or dropped down on homes. They also received roughly 2,500 "incident calls," which are less severe forms of damage. Breed said that number was high, and reflected the severity of the storm.
He said the calm weather on Friday was allowing crews to assess and clean damage quickly, leading to faster restoration.
Versant spokesperson Tina Morrill said Thursday afternoon strong winds were preventing crews from being able to ascend in bucket trucks. She urged customers to be careful as they clean up, because several inches of snow may be covering up downed wires, which are never safe to touch.
"One of the concerns that we do have is when people are ready to start cleaning up, we know that they're going to get out there because they want to get rid of the snow," she said. "And we just want people to be safe and not come in contact with the downed line that they may not know is on their property."
NEWS CENTER Maine's weather team predicted the storm would bring a risk of widespread outages due to high winds and sticky, heavy snow.
"During a storm of this magnitude, CMP transitions to what we call 'storm mode,' where every person—all of our 1,000 employees—takes on a different role," Breed said. "We all have our storm role job and those employees are deployed all across our state right now working to assess at our 11 different service centers to get the resources out to the communities to make them safe; to begin to restore transmission and then get customers back online. We know that power outages are frustrating to our customers, but just know that we're out there and that we're working and we're working as quickly and as safely as we can."
He said Thursday's storm will likely rank in the top 10 most severe in terms of outages. He said the last comparable storm was in December 2023 around Christmas, when power was knocked out to roughly 400,000 customers.
Breed said the state has been seeing more and more serious storms in recent months.
"We continue to prioritize investment in grid hardening, but let's be real," he said. "We are seeing stronger, more frequent storms. We used to see a storm of this magnitude once a year, maybe once every 18 months. Last year we had three. This year we've already had two. The frequency of these storms is picking up. The strength of these storms are picking up. We attribute that to a changing climate."
Downed Trees in Portland
Maine’s largest city sent out a press release early Friday afternoon to notify residents that crews are working to clean up tree damage from the March 24 ice storm and yesterday’s snow and windstorm. Portland is asking residents to be patient as the parks and recreation team and public works crews get to work.
Jessica Grondin, director of communications and digital services, said the city received over 400 tree damage reports, many of which were large trees or limbs that took a day or more to remove.
“There are thousands of unreported limbs and branches that came down in the public right of way that need to be collected,” Grondin said.
Parks, Recreation, and Facilities Department Director Ethan Hipple said the public can help the process along.
“Residents can assist in the effort by taking their own debris to Riverside Recycling where it can be processed,” Hipple stated in the release. “We ask that you not add to the problem by dragging private debris out to the street as our small and dedicated group of city workers already have a lot on their plate. Also, when you see a crew out in the field, please feel free to give them a thank you for their hard work over these past few weeks!”