Hail pelted Fort Kent at the state's northern tip around lunch hour and also hit the nearby St. John Valley communities of Frenchville, Lille, Van Buren and Grand Isle, the National Weather Service said.
In central Maine, dozens of home and camp owners on Lake Wesserunsett were hit by a tornado-like storm Friday afternoon during heavy thunderstorms throughout Somerset County.
A walk along Laney Road in East Madison on Saturday revealed uprooted trees, roofs and lawns impaled by flying debris, cars crushed by falling trees and utility poles and wires dangling within a few feet of the road.
Katie Ouilette of East Madison said she had started up the stairs Friday to close a window when she heard "this 'everything' sound. Snap, crackle, pop."
"I quick came back down and looked out this window and this is what I saw," Ouilette said, pointing to a huge pine tree that been sheared off eight feet above the groundand peeled back a corner of her roof.
Dozens of Madison's town employees, firefighters, volunteers, homeowners and Central Maine Power Co. crews were at work to begin to restore order.
Robert Higgins, Somerset County's emergency manager director, estimated the destruction at $500,000 to $1 million countywide.
He said other towns also were hit by the storms as they made their way through the area, including Norridgewock, Skowhegan, Cornville, Madison, Solon and Athens, beginning about 3:30p.m.
The Cornville home of Sandra and Philip Goodell on West Ridge Road was struck by lightning, and it "ripped a corner of the house right off," according to Sandra Goodell.
On Monlunkus Road in Skowhegan, a woman was struck by lightning and survived, Higgins said. She was treated at a hospital and released, he said.
Higgins said that although the storm was called a microburst by weather watchers,with wind estimated at 70 mph, he figures it was closer to tornado-like wind that may have been at speeds nearly twice as much.
"Some people reported see a funnel form and start to lift water off the lake," Higgins said.
Madison Fire Chief Roger Lightbody said five vehicles were crushed and five houses sustained heavy damage. The wind tore the kitchen off one woman's camp.
Camp owner Mary Vigue looked over fallen trees that filled her yard.
A stray limb had impaled her garage roof, sticking out like a giant arrow. She said it had gone through the roof about 2 feet.
Home at the time, Vigue said she didn't see much of the actual devastation as it was happening: "That's how fast it came down," she said.
Camp owner Alex Pakulski, a Skowhegan optometrist, said he and his wife, Mardi, were lucky not to have been at home. His entire driveway was filled with fallen trees. Had their cars been there, they would have been destroyed, he said.
His dock was flipped and underwater, and his boat had to be hauled off the rocks down the lake, he said.
"We were really lucky," Pakulski said. "If we had been here, we probably would have been squashed running around trying to secure things."
No injuries were reported in northern Maine during Saturday's storm, but police said the severe hail damaged hoods, roofs and trunks of vehicles parked on the lot at Martin Ford, a Fort Kent dealership.
The hail also took its toll at Northern Maine Medical Center, where two windows were broken and employee vehicles were damaged.
The storm was blamed on a cold front that was moving slowly across the state and causing unstable conditions.
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 building in Masardis, where a...
Reader comments
Click here to view or add comments on this story
Were you interviewed for this story? If so, please fill out our accuracy form