By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — The price tag of a storm system that slammed the county on June 8 and 9 is still rising with ongoing damage assessments; Caribou may have been hit the worse by the storms, but it seems all communities felt the weather’s wrath.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
Jacob Paradis, 16 and Brandon Belanger, 9, forged their way across the temporary river, otherwise known as Limestone Street in Caribou. The body of water was created by over two inches of rain that fell in under two hours on June 9.
As of Tuesday afternoon, public infrastructure repairs totaled an estimated $1,003,507 and that doesn’t include damage assessment costs from the Maine Department of Transportation or damage incurred by private property.
The National Weather Service office in Caribou confirmed that three tornadoes touched down during the two day storm span, two of which occurred on June 8 and one on June 9; all tornados were classified as EF0 (the lowest category of tornados), meaning winds ranged from 65 to 85 miles per hours.
A tornado that touched down at approximately 6:22 p.m. on June 8 southeast of Little Madawaska Lake intermittently skipped its way down a 10-mile path that reached a peak width of 75 yards, dissipating four miles northwest of the Loring Commerce Centre.
The two other tornadoes, one on June 8 in Ashland and one on June 9 in Fort Fairfield, both had a maximum path width of 50 yards and a touchdown duration of approximately a fourth of a mile; damage from these two twisters was confined to trees, as reported by officials with the National Weather Service Office in Caribou.
Precipitation that accompanied the thunderstorms is also to blame for the rising costs of infrastructure damages.
Over two inches of rain fell in under two hours on the afternoon of June 9; some roads were washed out, like portions of the Grimes Mill Road, Sawyer Road and River Road in Caribou, and traffic was backed up on High Street when the water was flowing so rapidly that it literally swept up small portions of the pavement and carried them ‘down stream.’
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
A Caribou Public Works employee put up barricades around a containment wall that gave way to a flood of rain on June 9, following a downpour that yielded over two inches of rain in under two hours.
“When the rain comes down in a very high rate, like when you get two inches in an hour or two, in this case, the water really has nowhere to go,” said Warning Coordination Meteorologist Noelle Runyan of the National Weather Service Office in Caribou.
The washed out roads have since been restored to passable conditions, but the heavy volume of precipitation has done irreparable harm to some farmers’ crops.
According to Tim Hobbs, director of development and grower relations of the Maine Potato Board, fields have been washed out for growers in many communities, “and there’s a significant amount of drown out where the water’s been laying in the fields,” he added.
Gully and sheet erosion has countered farmers’ efforts as well, washing away parts of their lengthy and expensive plantings while rendering other crop areas inaccessible.
“That’s the problem with an early summer storm, there’s not a lot of vegetation to slow the erosion,” Hobbs said. “When the soil is bare like this, the results are fairly dramatic.”
While growers will undoubtedly attempt to repair their topsoil and restore accessibility to all corners of their fields, Hobbs says that the drowned out crops are most likely irreparable.
“In most cases, you’ve got a lot of the expense in planting the first time around, and it’s getting to the point now where replanting is not much of an option,” he said.
Maine Public Service estimates that 7,000 customers lost power at one time during the two-day storm series between lightening strikes, downed trees, high winds and broken branches. The largest grouping of customers that went the longest without power were the 3,400 customers in the Frenchville area, who were without power from 5:30 p.m. on June 8 to 1 a.m. on June 9, according to Maine Public Service Director of Public Information Virginia Joles.
MPS crews worked shifts as long as 24 hour repairing the damage, in some instances having to repair the same lines multiple time as additional trees fell, before being replaced by the incoming crew from Island Falls.
Damaged roads, downed trees and some flooding hindered the efforts of MPS crewmembers, but Joles said that most everyone was restored power by 3:20 a.m. on June 10.
“It was just one of those weather patterns and it does happen periodically, though it doesn’t happen often here,” Runyan said.
“We always suggest that the public prepare for this kind of weather event,” said Deputy Director of the Aroostook County Emergency Management Agency Darren Woods, suggesting that individuals can obtain a list of information and supplies by visiting www.aroostookema.com and www.maine.gov/mema/prepare.
