FORT KENT, Maine — It’s time to pull out those holiday gift sweaters, scarves and hats, as much of northern and central Maine are under wind chill warnings as a frigid air mass and high winds move through the area today, pushing temperatures down to double digits below zero in some areas.
“We are seeing a cold trough of low pressure and an Arctic high coming down from central Canada,” Mark Bloomer, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Caribou, said Monday afternoon. “Tonight, we are going to see lows down to the low- to mid-20s below zero to the north and down to the low single digits along the coast.”
Factoring in the steady winds, according to Bloomer, those temperatures are going to feel like 45 below zero in northern Maine and 22 below zero in central and Down East Maine overnight Monday.
On Tuesday, temperatures will not rise above zero in the north and will struggle to get into the single digits in the central part of the state, he said.
Residents are cautioned to stay inside when possible and dress accordingly if going outside, because the combination of wind and intense cold could freeze exposed skin or lead to hypothermia.
As the winds and cold temperatures spread into Maine, some residents had no choice about being out in the elements.
Monday afternoon, Emera Maine had crews working outside on downed power lines, trying to restore electricity to about 1,984 customers, the bulk of whom were in Old Town, Argyle, Edinburg, Howland, LaGrange, Milo and Maxfield.
Power had been restored to most of those customers by Monday evening, but other outages caused by the strong winds and wind gusts affected more than 3,000 customers in the Deer Isle and Stonington area. A large majority of those customers remained without power into the night, according to an update issued by Emera Maine at 8:45 p.m., but the company estimated service would be restored by 11 p.m.
“Once a lineman is in that bucket and above the treeline, the winds can pick up dramatically,” Claude Brown, safety specialist and training coordinator with Emera, said Monday afternoon. “Frostbite with the windchill is a big concern.”
When the weather gets this cold, Brown said, the company doubles up on personnel.
“We’ll put two guys in the truck so when one is in the bucket, the other can be in the truck warming up,” Brown said. “Then they can keep swapping off.”
Brown, who spent 15 years working as a lineman in the elements before taking a desk job, said the bulky safety gloves combined with wool inner liners can make repair work a bit of a challenge in cold weather.
“We do a lot of training on that,” he said. “But it still takes some getting used to.”
Working outside in bitter cold and just trying to stay warm can be draining and tiring, Brown said.
“We can’t stay inside when it’s cold [because] power outages trump everything else,” he said. “We watch out for each other out there.”
Power was expected to be restored to all the Emera customers in central Maine by early Monday evening, according to the company’s website.
Elsewhere, cold and wind were creating potentially dangerous conditions on southern Maine roadways, where at least 20 vehicles were damaged along the interstate and turnpike by pieces of ice flying off other vehicles, according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland.
Most of the incidents, which included broken windshields and cracked grills, were reported south of Portland, McCausland said. There were no injuries, and motorists are urged to make sure their vehicles are free of ice and snow before hitting the road this winter.
The gusty winds that buffeted Belfast in the afternoon knocked down the city’s 25-foot Christmas tree, despite the two 3,000-pound concrete blocks that weighed down its steel base at Post Office Square. Just after the tree crashed to the ground, a passerby went to the nearby police station to tell personnel there that he almost got hit.
“That just shows how much power is in the wind,” marveled Belfast Councilor Mike Hurley, who came to watch as municipal workers cleared out the downed tree.
Back at the National Weather Service, Bloomer said the extreme cold, while not record-breaking for this time of year, will be hanging around for much of the week and into the weekend.
“It happens this time of year,” he said. “We are getting into January.”
BDN writers Ryan McLaughlin and Abigail Curtis contributed to this report.
