Atlantic storm Lee delivers high winds and rain before forecasters call off warnings in some areas

The hurricane centre reported late Saturday that the storm was about 105 miles (170 kilometres) west of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and about 80 miles (125 kilometres) east of Eastport, Maine. The top sustained wind speed had dropped to 60 mph (95 kph).

The storm was tracked as moving around 14 mph (22 kph) and expected to proceed northeast in the coming days, taking the weather system across the Canadian Maritimes. Rainfall was expected to be an additional 1 inch (25 millimetres) or less for portions of eastern Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the U.S. storm centre said.

A tropical storm warning remained in effect for parts of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and the Magdalen Islands.

Earlier Saturday in Bar Harbor, Maine, the touristy gateway to Acadia National Park, a whale watch vessel broke free of its mooring and crashed ashore. Authorities worked to offload 1,800 gallons (6,813 litres) of diesel fuel to prevent it from spilling into the ocean.

Lee flooded coastal roads in Nova Scotia and took ferries out of service while fanning anxiety in a region still reeling from wildfires and severe flooding this summer. The province’s largest airport, Halifax Stanfield International, cancelled all flights.

“People are exhausted,” said Pam Lovelace, a councillor in Halifax. “It’s so much in such a small time period.” Hurricane-force winds extended as far as 140 miles (220 kilometres) from Lee’s centre, with tropical-storm-force winds extending as far as 320 miles (515 kilometres), enough to cover all of Maine and much of Maritime Canada.

The storm was large and strong enough to cause power outages several hundred miles from its centre. At midday Saturday, 11% of electricity customers in Maine lacked power, along with 27% of Nova Scotia, 8% of New Brunswick and 3% of Prince Edward Island.

Storm surges of up to 3 feet (0.91 meters) were expected along coastal areas, accompanied by large and destructive waves, the hurricane centre said. Lee was anticipated to drop as much as 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimetres) of rain on parts of eastern Maine and New Brunswick through Saturday night, with the potential for local flooding.

A 51-year-old motorist in Searsport, Maine, died after a large tree limb fell on his vehicle Saturday on U.S. Highway 1 during a period of high winds, the first fatality attributed to the storm.

The tree limb brought down live power lines and utility workers had to cut power before the man could be removed, Police Chief Brian Lunt said. The unidentified man died later at a hospital, Lunt said.

The storm skirted some of the most waterlogged areas of Massachusetts that experienced severe flash flooding days earlier when fast water washed out roads, caused sinkholes, damaged homes and flooded vehicles.

In eastern Maine, winds died down enough by late afternoon Saturday for utility workers to begin using bucket trucks to make repairs. Central Maine Power and Versant Power had hundreds of workers, including out-of-state crews, assisting the effort.

“At this point, the storm is resembling a nor’easter,” said Sarah Thunberg, a National Weather Service meteorologist, referring to the fall and winter storms that often plague the region and are so named because their winds blow from the northeast. They typically have a much wider wind field than tropical systems with winds remaining closer to a storm’s center.

The entire region has experienced an especially wet summer, ranking second in the number of rainy days in Portland, Maine — and Lee’s high winds toppled trees stressed by the rain-soaked ground in Maine, the nation’s most heavily wooded state.

Cruise ships found refuge at berths in Portland, Maine, while lobstermen in Bar Harbor and elsewhere pulled traps from the water and hauled boats inland.

Billy Bob Faulkingham, House Republican leader of the Maine Legislature, and another lobsterman survived after their boat overturned while hauling traps ahead of the storm Friday, officials said.

The boat’s emergency locator beacon alerted authorities and the pair clung to the hull until help arrived, said Winter Harbor Police Chief Danny Mitchell. The 42-foot (12.8-meter) boat sank.

“They’re very lucky to be alive,” Mitchell said.

Forecasters urged residents to stay home, but many ventured out anyway.

Betsy Follansbee and her husband, Fred, jogged to Higgins Beach in Scarborough, Maine, to watch surfers — some wearing helmets — paddling out to catch waves reaching 12 feet (3.6 meters). They were the biggest waves Follansbee had seen in her 10 years living there, she said.

“We’re impressed that they’re bold enough to try,” Follansbee said.

On Maine’s Bailey Island, a slender spit jutting into the Gulf of Maine, Ren Renton watched the ocean roil. “It comes and goes and takes what it wants, but hopefully not too much,” she said.

Lee shared some characteristics with 2012’s Superstorm Sandy. Both storms were once-strong hurricanes that became post-tropical cyclones — cyclonic storms that have lost most of their tropical characteristics — before landfall. Lee was not expected to be nearly as destructive as Sandy, which caused billions of dollars in damage and was blamed for dozens of deaths in New York and New Jersey.

Lee also was not anywhere near as severe as the remnants of Hurricane Fiona, which a year ago washed houses into the ocean in eastern Canada, knocked out power to most of two provinces and swept a woman into the sea, Canadian meteorologist Jill Maepea said.

Destructive hurricanes are relatively rare so far north. The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 brought gusts as high as 186 mph (300 kph) and sustained winds of 121 mph (195 kph) at Massachusetts’ Blue Hill Observatory. There have been no storms that powerful in recent years.