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Machias: A weakening Hurricane Kyle spun past Maine's rugged eastern coast Sunday, delivering a glancing blow as it moved on to Canada.
As darkness fell, the storm produced winds hard enough to jiggle road signs, cause scattered power outages and rip early-autumn leaves from trees while lashing the Maine coast with a third straight day of heavy rain. Flooding closed roads as the storm sped up the Bay of Fundy, which separates Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick from Nova Scotia.
Kyle made landfall Sunday night in southern Nova Scotia as a marginal Category 1 hurricane and was later downgraded to a tropical storm by the Canadian Hurricane Centre. Some 12,000 power outages were reported in the province.
Maine emergency responders had braced for wind gusts as high as 97km/h and waves up to six metres, but as the storm edged eastward it became clear that the state had escaped a direct hit.
"This was a run-of-the-mill storm. It had the potential to be a real problem and it all sort of went away," said Michael Hinerman, director of the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.
Officials had once expected the eye to hit at the Maine-New Brunswick border, but with the storm fading to the east, the state closed its emergency operations centre in Augusta Sunday night. There were no evacuations in Maine, but more than 500 customers lost power because of the gusty winds.
18 centimetres of rain had fallen in three days along some coastal areas. Flood watches were lifted for the southern two-thirds of New Hampshire and southern Maine but remained in effect for the Down East coast.
Rough weather
Residents of the area are accustomed to rough weather, but it most often comes in the winter when storms from the northeast howl along the coast.
Maine hasn't had anything like a hurricane since Bob was downgraded in 1991 after causing problems in southern New England.
While residents took precautions, many weren't impressed by Kyle.
Many lobstermen and fishermen moved their boats to sheltered coves and inlets, said Dwight Carver, a lobsterman on Beals Island. Some also moved lobster traps from shallow water.
In Lubec, the easternmost town in the US, workers pulled up docks and fishermen moved boats across the harbour into Campobello Island, New Brunswick, which has coves that offer shelter.
Early on Sunday, Kyle was approaching Saint John, New Brunswick, and the storm was expected to move north across the province during the day.
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