By Mark LaFlamme,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Power lines down. Homes and businesses dark. Alarms sounding and power company trucks everywhere.

Thursday was like a preview of approaching winter storms as gusting wind and heavy downpours wreaked havoc across the state.

By late Thursday night, more than 9,000 Central Maine Power Co. customers were without power, a number whittled down from 20,000 earlier in the afternoon. Outages were scattered across the western part of the state, with Farmington and Skowhegan the most heavily hit areas.

By 4:30 p.m., nearly 3,000 homes and businesses in the Farmington region were without power. In Skowhegan, 3,506 CMP customers had no electricity. In Lewiston, more than 1,000 customers were affected, and there were 2,591 in the Bridgton region.

“Heavy winds have blown large limbs, and in some cases entire trees, onto our power lines,” said CMP spokesman John Carroll. “The combination of strong winds, heavy rain and darkness have made the going pretty tough for our crews. But they will continue to work into, and if necessary, through the night to get services back up.”

The afternoon of nasty weather was not without its pleasantries. At about 6 p.m., men, women and children who had been dashing in and out of the rain stopped to examine a spectacle in the sky. A rainbow, visible from all parts of Lewiston and Auburn and surrounding areas, arched across the sky.

Depending on where the viewer was located, the rainbow appeared to form an archway over downtown Lewiston, or Lake Auburn in that city. On Park Street in Lewiston, several people paused near Kennedy Park as the rainbow formed a half-circle over Trinity Church.

The result of light passing through droplets of water, the rainbow appeared over the area for roughly 15 minutes. It belied the mayhem left behind by the wind and rain.

In Andover, a tree fell onto a major transformer on the Notch Road, causing a two-hour power outage across that town. A dead tree blew across Route 120 in Mexico, causing traffic problems there.

In Lewiston, whipping winds knocked out power to traffic lights in some of the busiest intersections in the city. For three hours Thursday afternoon, police officers stood in pouring rain, directing traffic through intersections along Russell, College and Main streets, as well as other parts of the city.

Public works crews began making repairs and had the traffic lights working again by 6 p.m. Police said there were no serious wrecks or other mishaps as a result of that outage.

In Auburn, police, fire and public works crews responded mostly to reports of fallen trees. Few power outages were reported and there were no problems with traffic lights by nightfall.

“We’ve been lucky,” said Moe Bolduc of the Auburn Police Department.

How windy was it? The National Weather Service recorded a 60 mph gust in Columbia, N.H. In Maine, it was not that ferocious, but the wind was unrelenting throughout the day.

“Every part of our service territory, with the exception of York County, has some outages right now,” CMP spokeswoman Gail Rice said Thursday. “It’s happening everywhere.”

A cold front moving across western Maine was blamed for Thursday’s raucous weather. By twilight, the clouds were pulling apart and blue sky was visible. Weather forecasters said Friday will be warm and sunny, and the fair weather is expected to last through the weekend.

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