Dec. 26—Thousands of Mainers are still without power, following a powerful storm Friday that tore through the state, delivering high winds, rain, and flooding.
Utility workers made a big dent in restoring power to Maine homes over the weekend, returning electricity to almost 300,000 customers who had lost electricity on Friday.
But as of Monday morning there were still about 24,300 households who, following a dark and cold Christmas holiday, were still waiting for power in below-freezing temperatures.
That includes roughly 13,300 Central Maine Power customers in the south and central portion of the state and 11,000 Versant Power customers in the northern and eastern portions of the state.
Maine's utility companies have warned customers that restoring power to all customers will take days.
CMP expects to restore power for most customers by Tuesday night, president and CEO Joe Purington said in a statement Sunday night.
Versant Power said Monday that the company will have over 100 crews working to address damage and make repairs throughout its service area.
Versant Power said it hopes to restore power to all of its customers by Thursday.
York and Cumberland are still among the highest counties with customers without power.
As of Monday morning, about 2,800 CMP customers were still without power in Cumberland County, and just over 3,0000 in York County. Oxford and Lincoln Counties were also experiencing high outage numbers, with 2,500 customers without power and 2,800 customers without power, respectively.
The storm, which raged from late Thursday through Friday, delivered historic wind gusts and flooding that damaged property and took down trees and power lines.
According to the Associated Press, out of the New England states, Maine's utilities were hit the hardest.
The National Weather Service in Gray said the week will be "comparatively quiet," with temperatures around or just under freezing at the start and steadily increasing throughout the week.
Friday, wind gusts reached 64 miles per hour in Portland, 59 miles per hour in interior Gray, and winds as high as 70 to 80 miles per hour were recorded on an island weather station near Rockland, NWS meteorologist Jon Palmer said.
This story will be updated