FORT KENT, Maine - The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning late Saturday afternoon for northwest Aroostook, northern Piscataquis and portions of Somerset Counties as virtually the entire state remained under flood warnings and watches.
“There is a slow-moving thunderstorm that is producing heavy rain over Allagash,” Rich Norton, an intern at the NWS office in Caribou said. “It’ s staying pretty much in one spot and producing one to two inches of rain an hour.”
It was the same situation affecting Somerset and Piscataquis Counties, Norton said.
According to the NWS, Doppler radar indicated the nearly stationary thunderstorm had dropped more than two-inches of rain in an hour between Lake Moxie and Brassua.
At the same time radar showed the second slow-moving storm just south of Estcourt Station and another cell west of Allagash.
All three storms are expected to produce significant rain causing brooks, streams and small rivers to rise with flooding along country roads, on farmland and along urban streets due to ponding water.
“The ground is already pretty saturated,” Norton said. “The water will just run off.”
By late Saturday afternoon rainfall totals ranged from nearly 3 1/2 inches in the St. John Valley to well over two-inches in Prospect Harbor, Patten, and Princeton.
Bangor saw seven-tenths of an inch of rain.
This pattern of heavy rains with intermittent breaks of sun is expected to last through the coming week, Norton said, thanks to a stalled upper level low spinning over Hudson Bay.