Hurricane Lee targets New England and eastern Canada with wind, roiling seas and rain

Lee remained a hurricane with 80 mph (128 kph) winds Friday afternoon as it headed toward New England and eastern Canada with 20-foot (6-meter) ocean swells, strong winds and rain.

Fishermen removed lobster traps from the water and residents hauled hundreds of boats ashore — leaving some harbors looking like ghost towns — while utility workers from as far away as Tennessee began taking up positions Friday ahead of Hurricane Lee’s heavy winds, high seas and rain spanning hundreds of miles (kilometers) of land and sea.

The storm is projected to be more than 400 miles (640 kilometers) wide with tropical-storm-force winds when it reaches land, creating worries of power outages in Maine, the nation’s most heavily forested state, where the ground is saturated and trees are weakened from heavy summer rains.

Lee remained a hurricane with 80 mph (128 kph) winds Friday afternoon as it headed toward New England and eastern Canada with 20-foot (6-meter) ocean swells, strong winds and rain. Forecasters said there would be winds topping 40 mph (64 kph) across the region ahead of landfall expected Saturday afternoon.

There was little else to be done but wait and worry, and make final preparations as Lee spun about 395 miles (635 kilometers) southeast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, and moved away from Bermuda.

On Long Island, Maine, off of Portland, commercial lobster fisherman Steve Train had just finished hauling 200 traps out of the water. Train, who is also a firefighter, was going to wait out the storm on the island in Casco Bay.

He was not concerned about staying there in the storm. “Not one bit,” he said.

In South Thomaston, Dave Cousens, who lost fishing gear when Hurricane Bob came through in 1991, said lobstermen were busy moving their traps, which cost $100 to $170 apiece, out of harm’s way to try to avoid damage from the rough seas. Some were pulling their boats out, as well.