Tropical Storm — Interior Waldo, Maine

2023-09-16 · Interior Waldo, Maine

Event narrative

Minor impacts were reported for this event. No inundation flooding was reported, but there was high surf on the Saturday midday high tide cycle as long period 8 to 10 foot swells reached the coast. This caused some minor splash-over and erosion in isolated areas. Northerly wind gusts around 50 mph led to minor to moderate wind impacts as branches and many trees came down, which led to 7000 outages in the county on Saturday afternoon. Power outage rates reached close to 25% of the county. No flooding impacts were reported with rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 being reported.

Wider weather episode

Hurricane Lee was a category 1 hurricane as it traveled north through the eastern Gulf of Maine early on Saturday, September 16th, before it was reclassified as Post-Tropical Cyclone Lee during the morning hours. The storm center eventually made landfall near Long Island, Nova Scotia on the evening of September 16th and then again in New Brunswick later on Saturday night. Lee brought numerous wind gusts of 35 to 50 mph across western Maine, which result in several downed trees and power outages. Power outages in the GYX area of responsibility peaked around 125,000 outages. There was one fatality as a large tree limb fell on a motorist. Majority of power outages were in coastal Maine. Rainfall amounts were mostly light, except along the Mid-coast, where amounts of 1 to 2 inches were reported. There was no storm surge inundation coastal flooding with this event, with peak storm surge of around 2.5 that occurred at low tide on Saturday morning during a low astronomical tide cycle period. Some very minor beach erosion occurred on Saturday afternoon due to the large nearshore waves.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1143053. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.