Strong winds and driving rain brought down trees and knocked out power to more than 123,000 residents and businesses statewide Friday morning.

Central Maine Power reported almost 74,000 customers were without power as of 12:10 p.m., with the bulk of the outages in Cumberland, Kennebec and Lincoln and Waldo counties.

Emera Maine counted more than 52,000 customers, with more than 12,000 of them in Penobscot County, were also without electricity.

The wind storm is the second this fall that has brought down tree limbs and power lines.

In Cumberland County, Brunswick and Harpswell were particularly hard hit, with roughly 4,500 customers in the dark, with no estimated restoration time posted yet by CMP, triggering a two-hour delay at Brunswick schools.

The outages also triggered a string of school cancellations or delays. In Orono, outages cancelled classes and campus activities at the University of Maine until 5 p.m.

Wind gusts rose to 29 mph at the Portland International Jetport by 6 a.m., and hit 32 miles per hour in Lewiston, but other areas saw higher wind-speeds, according to the National Weather Service in Gray. In Bangor, winds reached 52 mph by 6 a.m., and 59 mph in Bar Harbor.

Farther inland, the winds in Fryeburg reached 39 mph., according to the weather service.

This story will be updated.


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