Thousands of people across central Maine were waiting for power to be restored Wednesday morning after the remnants of Tropical Storm Isaias blew through the area Tuesday night.

The storm, with high wind and rain, knocked down tree limbs across the region, which in turn knocked out power Tuesday evening in Kennebec and surrounding counties.

The storm, which forecasters in Maine had been watching in the Atlantic Ocean as it neared the U.S. coast, made landfall late Monday in North Carolina, and pushed up the coast as a tropical storm.

While the brunt of the storm was borne by York and Cumberland counties, Isaias brought rain and damaging wind to central Maine.

“The storm moved through a lot faster than the forecasts called for,” Derek Schroeter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, said Wednesday, and it didn’t produce as much rain as expected.

While bands of heavy rain fell across the region, the totals tallied were all less than an inch.

In Kennebec County, Augusta received 0.63 inches, Wayne received 0.66 inches and Waterville received 0.37 inches. In Franklin County, Weld received 0.96 inches.  In Somerset County, Harmony received 0.44 inches.

The heaviest rain fell in the western mountains, Schroeter said. Mount Washington measured 2.54 inches of rainfall.

Sean Goodwin, Kennebec County Emergency Management director, said the storm brought only about a half-inch of rain to the region.

“Our thing was mostly tree limbs,” Goodwin said.

Crews from Winslow’s fire department remove a fallen tree from Nowell Road in Winslow on Tuesday night. Michael G. Seamans/Morning Sentinel

Crews from Central Maine Power, lines crews the company has contracted with and tree crews, have been working since Tuesday evening to restore power across the region.

In Somerset County, Emergency Management Director Michael Smith said as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, about 512 outages were reported. Just after lunch time, he did not have an update on what those numbers were.

“Somerset County fared pretty well with minor power outages,” Smith said.

Smith added that a couple of towns, including Hartland, reported around 200 outages. Crews are mostly dealing with fallen tree branches and call volumes were not high, he said.

“The storm mostly tracked west, which kept Somerset County out of its heavy damage path,” Smith said.

Schroeter said the storm’s wind gusts were enough to knock down tree limbs across the region.

Augusta’s peak wind gust was measured at 45 mph, and Rangeley’s was 38 mph.

The peak gust in at the Portland Jetport was 44 mph.

At the height of the storm, 91,000 customers were without power, with most of those in York and Cumberland counties, where dozens of roads were closed because of downed power lines, and boats moored on Sebago Lake were washed ashore by 5-foot waves.

Schroeter said a stretch of nice weather is expected in the wake of the storm with drier conditions before humidity moves back into central Maine at the start of next week.

Morning Sentinel reporter Taylor Abbott contributed to this story.

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