New England was battered by rain and wind on Monday, Dec. 18, causing widespread power outages and flooding and, at Bates, downed trees, stymied travel plans and emergency alerts sent to students.
Students who remained on campus this past weekend experienced nearly four inches of rain and 50-mile-per-hour winds on campus. In the early afternoon, they were informed via a text message from the college’s Emergency System to “avoid the Historic Quad due to high winds and downed trees.”
In the surrounding Lewiston-Auburn area, hundreds of residents faced evacuation orders as the Androscoggin River reached what city officials called “record level[s]” and thousands were left without power. Social media posts show that the waters of the river were raging, entirely submerging Lewiston’s Veterans Memorial Park.
The state of Maine as a whole experienced heavy rainfall and wind, and in many areas, flooding and loss of power. On Tuesday, more than 328,000 Maine residents were out of power, and several cities in northern Maine experienced severe flooding. In Farmington, city officials described a scene of complete isolation, as all interior roads were closed and flooding of routes in and out of the town left it “essentially an island.” Further south, the Frank J. Wood Bridge connecting Brunswick and Topsham was closed due to both the storm and ongoing construction, and several stretches of State Route 27 were flooded, cutting off residents along the northern end of the route from the rest of the state. Nationwide, at least eight people were killed in the storm, according to weather reports.
Various social media posts surfaced displaying flooding and damage that popular ski resorts such as Sunday River and Sugarloaf suffered. Roads were also destroyed leading up to these locations, leaving several visitors to both locations stranded. As of right now, Sunday River is scheduled to re-open to the public on Saturday Dec. 23, whereas Sugarloaf opened on Thursday.
At the peak of power outages, over half of Central Maine Power’s 673,950 customers were without power. As of Friday, nearly 25,000 customers remained without power.
