BANGOR, Maine — Rose MacArthur of Eddington had just come home from work about 4:30 p.m. Monday when the sky suddenly turned dark and the wind began to whip.
“I was going to look up the weather forecast but before I could, the weather happened,” MacArthur, a nurse, said shortly after the incident.
“I looked outside the window and could see branches and other things flying around,” she said.
“It was just like being in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” MacArthur said, describing what she believed to be a small tornadolike event, with her home in the eye.
She said she “was shaking and running back and forth between rooms” as she watched trees and limbs crashing down around the house. Then came a heavy downpour, she said.
Though no serious injuries were reported, the line of fast-paced and intense thunderstorms that swept across Maine kept public safety personnel hopping as they fielded calls about downed trees, blocked streets, damage to buildings and minor motor vehicle accidents.
Meteorologist Lee Foster of the National Weather Service in Caribou said Monday’s wild weather was the result of a strong cold front.
The front entered Maine from the western border with Quebec about 1 p.m., moved east through Piscataquis and Penobscot counties and continued east through the Down East region before moving on through to New Brunswick about 5:30 p.m.
By that time, the string of storms had weakened, Foster said.
The NWS received several reports of pea-size hail along the storm’s path, as well as wind gusts of as high as 56 mph reported from Bangor International Airport, he said.
He said a weaker cold front could bring wet weather back to Maine by late afternoon today, but the weather should be much less dramatic.
MacArthur and her husband, Scott MacArthur, who works for a fence business, said the storm caused thousands of dollars in damage at their residence on Route 9, not far from the Clifton town line.
The wind tore off pieces of roofing and siding, damaged a wood boiler chimney that extends up through the roof and knocked over a big, old elm tree in front of their home and three large pine trees out back, they said.
“My bird feeders are all blown helter-skelter,” Rose MacArthur said.
The wind also wrecked the couple’s brand-new solar panels, which were propped up against their barn waiting to be installed.
“One of them is completely shattered,” Rose MacArthur said. She said she was pretty sure her neighbors had similar experiences.
“You can hear chain saws up and down Route 9,” she said a little after 6 p.m.
A Central Maine Power Co. spokesman said that as of 5 p.m., the company had 384 customers without power in Waldo County, 2,163 in Penobscot County, and 6,800 in Somerset County. No customers had lost power in Knox County.
Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. spokeswoman Susan Faloon reported at about 9 p.m. that about 6,500 customers were without power, with the bulk of outages in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties. Hancock County had about 375 outages and Washington County about 40.
Perhaps the busiest people during the storms were public safety personnel, including police officers, firefighters and dispatchers.
A dispatcher from the Penobscot Regional Communications Center said the Bangor facility typically fields about 400 emergency calls during a 24-hour period, but on Monday the total exceeded 480, with four hours left to go.
“We were just getting slammed,” Penobscot RCC Director James Ryan said late Monday afternoon. All nine dispatch consoles were busy.
He said that the center temporarily lost power late Monday afternoon but that the backup battery system and then generator kicked in seamlessly, enabling the center to continue operating.
A state police dispatcher with the Orono barracks said three dispatchers there fielded more than 300 911 calls during a 90-minute period.
“And that was just 911 calls,” she said, adding that others pitched in to answer the calls coming in on the eight nonemergency lines. “It was crazy.”
In Brewer, fire crews responded to 12 incidents between about 5 and 5:30 p.m., Brewer fire Lt. Robbie Wildes said. The incidents ranged from downed trees and power lines to minor car accidents, he said.
BDN writer Abigail Curtis in Belfast contributed to this report.