HOULTON, Maine — Halloween may have been Friday, but Mother Nature saved her tricks for Sunday as an early-season storm dropped more than 14 inches of snow on southern Aroostook County.
The heavy, wet snow coupled with high winds caused a number of problems for Houlton Water Company’s line crew as tree limbs bowed under the weight of rapidly falling snow.
Some portions of the greater Houlton area were without power Sunday, while other areas experienced intermittent outages lasting for only a couple of seconds. Many individuals also reported seeing a large blue-green ball of light, combined with sparks and buzzing sounds along power lines Sunday.
“On-call line personnel and water and sewer personnel were out working early Sunday on random trouble calls,” explained John Clark, president of HWC. “We brought in extra line personnel by 4:30 p.m. Sunday. In addition our remaining water/sewer crew was called in to assist the line crew, answer phones, check out calls of lines down.”
Clark said there were a few minor problems early in the day Sunday, but most of that was in the airport area due to lines coming together and trees falling.
“Our main problem was an equipment failure at the Cary’s mills substation that occurred about 5:30 p.m. Sunday,” he said. “It was repaired by 10 p.m.”
The Cary’s Mills substation serves Linneus, Hodgdon and New Limerick took out power for about 1,100 customers. Once the power was back at the substation, the HWC was able locate downed trees and branches on the circuits that fed Hodgdon, Linneus and New Limerick.
“We had all those circuits restored by 3 a.m. Monday,” Clark said. “The only areas off when we left work at 3 a.m. were a portion of Nickerson Lake behind the Houlton Golf Club, Green Lake and Drews Lake.
All customers were back on at 5 p.m. Monday.
So what was the cause of those strange balls of energy on the power lines?
“Lines slapping together because of wind and trees and branches falling on power lines, or trees and braches bending because of wet heavy snow that made contact with wires caused much of the problem,” Clark explained. “If you observed arcing or sparks, it was probably lines coming together because of the wind.”
