A series of violent thunderstorms struck the North Country Sunday evening with the worst hitting Littleton and Bethlehem just before 7 p.m., said Michael Cempa with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine.
“We were indicating fifty to sixty mile per hour gusts on our radar.”
Within minutes dozens of trees were felled, often blocking roads.
At one point one lane of Interstate 93 in Bethlehem was closed by a downed tree.
Nicole McGrath and her daughter were just trying to drive to their home in Bethlehem when one of those trees hit their car.
“It started raining really, really hard so we slowed down because we couldn’t really see and we stopped and then there was a tree on the car. It was pretty loud.”
Neither was hurt and there were no reports of any injuries elsewhere in the North Country.
According to the Associated Press, a man died in Claremont after a tree fell on his car during the storm.
Police say the man was driving west on Chestnut Street at around 7:25 p.m. Sunday. WMUR-TV reports they believe the wind uprooted a tree and sent it flying through the air, striking the man's car.
Police say they believe the man was killed instantly.
The storm caused up to 20,000 power outages at one point; that number was down to about 8,500 on Monday morning. Trees and power lines were damaged in Claremont and Newport.
