Enormous storm Lee lashes New England and Canada with wind, heavy rain, pounding surf

Storm Lee toppled trees and cut power to tens of thousands Saturday as its outer bands began hitting coastal New England and eastern Canada, threatening hurricane-force winds, dangerous surf and torrential rains as its center spun closer.

Storm Lee toppled trees and cut power to tens of thousands Saturday as it lashed New England and eastern Canada, threatening hurricane-force winds, dangerous storm surge and torrential rains across an enormous swath even though its center had yet to come ashore.

The storm, still dangerous after being downgraded from hurricane to post-tropical cyclone, was expected to make landfall at or just below hurricane strength around the Maine-New Brunswick border Saturday afternoon, then turn to the northeast and move across Atlantic Canada on Saturday night and Sunday.

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.

But the entire region has experienced an especially wet summer -- it ranked 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.

"We have a long way to go, and we're already seeing downed trees and power outages," said Todd Foisy, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

The storm's center was just off the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia, about 105 miles (170 kilometers) southeast of Eastport, Maine, and about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said at 11 a.m. EDT Saturday. It had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph) and was moving north at a fast clip of about 22 mph (35 kph).

Its weakened state belies its reach -- hurricane-force winds extend as far as 140 miles (220 kilometers) from the center, the National Hurricane Center said. Tropical-storm-force winds of at least 39 mph (62 kph) extend outward up to 390 miles (630 kilometers) -- enough to cover all of Maine and much of Maritime Canada.