Wearing camouflage bib waders, Ruby's voice wavered as he described the frustration and anxiety of dealing with flooding that has affected many homes in low-lying areas across Maine after Monday's storm. He's also one of nearly 500,000 customers who have lost power at some point during the last three days, and he doesn't expect to get it back anytime soon.
"I'm so screwed," he said, his eyes red from crying. "Everything I have is floating away."
Ruby, 36, and his neighbors found slight hope in seeing the river recede a few inches Wednesday afternoon, in keeping with what experts saw happening around the state.
Most of the major rivers had crested and were beginning to recede by Wednesday evening, but Greg Stewart, chief of the hydrologic monitoring branch of the United States Geological Survey in Augusta, cautioned about getting too close to rivers like the Androscoggin, Kennebec and Swift because water levels are still high.
"The rivers are receding, but they are still very high," Stewart said. "What's even more dangerous is what could be submerged under the flood waters."
Stewart said warmer than usual temperatures mixed with rain and snow in the mountains produced an enormous amount of "thermal energy" that turned the snowpack into liquid that poured into rivers and streams.
"The rainfall was the driving force, but the snowpack that was already on the ground magnified the flooding that we saw," Stewart said.
One of the locations that turned into a churning torrent of water was the Swift River near Rumford and Mexico where river gauges recorded 23,000 cubic feet of water flow per second. He said a record amount of water surged through the towns on the Swift River during the storm, breaking the old record of 16,800 cubic feet per second set in the 1950s.
The worst flood in Maine on record occurred in 1987, according to USGS records that go back 93 years, but the floods produced by Monday's storm were not far behind.
"This flood will very likely be the state's second largest on record," Stewart said.
The National Weather Service in Gray issued a flood warning Wednesday that will remain in effect until late Thursday evening.
Derek Schroeter, a weather service meteorologist, said that while nearly all rivers in Maine have crested and are receding there are locations such as the Androscoggin River in Auburn that bear watching. River levels peaked around noon Wednesday at 20.3 feet, far above the flood stage of 13 feet. Minor flooding in Auburn is expected on Thursday, but by Saturday morning water levels will drop far below flood stage.
The weather service is forecasting wind gusts of up to 40 mph on Thursday, which could hinder power restoration efforts, Schroeter said.
Many homes along the Crooked River in Casco, a small town in Cumberland County, were flooded and have been evacuated, including several year-round and seasonal homes on a peninsula at the end of Hancock Road.
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Comment: Severe flooding was also apparent across other states in New England:
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