Post-tropical cyclone Lee unleashed its fury upon New England and eastern Canada on Saturday, subjecting the regions to ferocious winds and relentless rainfall. The tempestuous onslaught left tens of thousands without power and raised the ominous specter of dangerous flooding.
Though Lee lost its hurricane status earlier on Saturday, it retained winds of 80mph, tantamount to a category 1 hurricane, as reported by the Washington Post.
A tropical storm warning was issued for areas spanning from the New Hampshire-Maine border into Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, while New Brunswick and Nova Scotia remained under a hurricane watch.
President Joe Biden, recognizing the looming threat, declared a state of emergency in Maine as Lee inexorably surged northward. Governor Janet Mills of Maine issued a stern warning, urging residents, particularly those in Down East, to take essential precautions against the approaching Hurricane Lee.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in the United States sounded the alarm for torrential downpours. The NHC cautioned that Lee’s heavy rainfall could give rise to localized urban and small stream flooding in eastern Maine and sections of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia from Saturday night onwards.
Meteorological forecasts predicted that Lee would make landfall on Saturday afternoon near or east of the US-Canada border, subsequently tracing a north-eastward trajectory along Atlantic Canada throughout the evening and into Sunday. Lee, which had earlier achieved the highest hurricane intensity classification, category 5, subjected Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the US Virgin Islands to tropical storm conditions before veering northward, as per the Associated Press.
The NHC issued a dire warning that Lee would engender “life-threatening surf and rip current conditions,” with waves soaring up to 15ft in certain coastal areas of Maine, posing a substantial risk of coastal erosion in the heavily wooded state, as highlighted by the AP.
Halifax, Nova Scotia, bore witness to coastal roads submerged and boats submerged in St Margarets Bay’s harbor, according to a report by Pam Lovelace, a Halifax councilor. This inundation arrived in the wake of a summer marred by extreme flooding.
“People are exhausted,” Lovelace remarked. “It’s so much in such a small time period. From a mental health perspective, we’re asking people to check in on their neighbors.”
The grounds, already saturated due to summertime rains, presented an additional peril to trees weakened by prior deluges. Meteorologist Todd Foisy of the National Weather Service described the situation as precarious, with downed trees and power outages already evident, as reported by the Associated Press.
Canadian authorities expressed the belief that Lee would not wreak as much havoc as the tail end of Hurricane Fiona did in 2021. Fiona’s waters engulfed homes, sending them into the Atlantic Ocean, and left most of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in the dark without power.
The AP noted that catastrophic hurricanes in this northern latitude are relatively rare. In 1938, the Great New England Hurricane roared through, boasting winds as high as 186mph and sustained gusts of 121mph at the Blue Hill Observatory in Massachusetts.
However, meteorological experts have termed the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season as unprecedented. The unusually warm sea surface temperatures this summer, a manifestation of the climate crisis, have created fertile conditions for tropical storms and hurricanes.