Central Maine Power lineman Sam Pottle scales a utility pole Sunday in Readfield. Pottle and his partner, George Marston, restored power at several locations in Kennebec County after wind knocked out service to thousands of customers. (Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal

About 9,000 Maine businesses and homes remained without power Sunday night after a powerful windstorm swept through the state Saturday, knocking down trees and power lines. At its peak, about 80,000 customers statewide had lost power.

Central Maine Power Co. reported 4,027 customers without electricity at 5:12 a.m. Monday. Crews from CMP worked overnight and 200 line crews were still in the field as the switch to Eastern Standard Time brought early darkness Sunday afternoon. The largest number of CMP customers still affected was in Franklin County, where 2,237 households were without power. Somerset, Oxford and Waldo counties had hundreds of outages.

“Things are rapidly progressing, particularly in the southern part of the state,” said CMP spokeswoman Catharine Hartnett. “Now we are busy shifting everybody up north. It’s harder up there, given the terrain.”

The storm brought heavy rains and wind gusts of up to 50 mph before it wound down late Saturday night. “It was short-lived but intense,” Hartnett said.

But not as intense as last year’s dramatic Oct. 30 storm, which left many Mainers without power for up to a week and included recorded gusts of 80 mph.

“Our peak outage was 38,000,” Hartnett said of Saturday’s windstorm. “Last year it was 480,000.”

Wayne resident Nicholas Wourms and his mother were some of the unlucky ones to experience another outage, just days past the anniversary of that epic storm, when his family weathered eight days without power. As the temperature dropped inside their log cabin, they threw on extra clothing and added blankets to their beds.

“It dipped down, with the wind blowing through the cracks (in the log cabin’s walls) to around 38 or 39 (degrees) at one point,” Wourms said Sunday at the Wayne General Store, where he’d gone seeking a hot meal to help warm up after their cold night in the converted camp on Windecker Way, between Lord Road and Pocasset Lake.

Last year the Wourmses’ log home stayed dark for more than a week after a number of trees took out the lines leading to their house. They are the last building on the line, he said, so he was relieved when CMP told him Sunday morning that someone was on the way to fix the power.

“I was worried this would be an extensive power outage like last year,” Wourms said. “That was pretty bad.”

Emera Maine, which operates in northern and eastern Maine, reported 4,105 outages at 9:30 p.m. Sunday, many of which were in Hancock County. In a written statement, the company said it had already restored power to 40,000 customers and that crews would be working through the night. Emera warned customers who were still without power by 10 p.m. Sunday to expect to be without power until Monday.

Temperatures were expected to dip below freezing across the state Sunday night, according to the National Weather Service. It was already 30 degrees in Wiscasset and 29 degrees in Sanford by 9:45 p.m. But no precipitation is expected Monday, and the day should turn partly sunny with temperatures about 45 degrees to the south and 40 degrees to the north.

The next rain could move in Tuesday afternoon.

Staff Writer Beth Quimby contributed to this report.

Mary Pols can be contacted at 791-6456 or at:

mpols@pressherald.com