Sam Joyall, co-owner of Rusticators Emporium on Water Street in downtown Hallowell, points out Thursday the high-water mark of last year’s December flood, the fifth-highest in the city’s history. Joyall says he noticed the water rising fast on the morning of Dec. 19, 2023, and he quickly called his wife. “I did a quick U-turn around, she booked it up there, and then we spent the rest of the day watching as that graph kept projecting it to go higher and higher for flooding.” Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

7:30 a.m., Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023

Kennebec River at 17.3 feet: moderate flood stage

HALLOWELL — Power was out on Water Street, and Sam Joyall knew there was a cold spell coming. He drove from his home in Richmond to insulate his storefront, The Rusticators Emporium, from the dropping temperatures early Tuesday morning.

Joyall passed the boat launch on the southern end of downtown. It hadn’t rained for almost a day, but water encroached on the launch parking lot. Noted.

He continued on to his store, two blocks north of the launch, insulating supplies in hand.

“By the time I had stuffed the doors and was like, ‘OK, this is all I came here for,’ and was leaving, I noticed how — in that brief period — substantially higher the water was at the boat landing area,” he said.

A slow-moving storm had dropped 4-8 inches of rain across much of Maine over the previous two days, melting snowpack and quickly increasing river levels.

Joyall was seeing the beginning of what would become a historic flood. A year ago this week, riverside communities across central Maine suffered damage they will remember for decades — and as the climate changes, the storms that led to the flooding are expected to only increase in intensity.

It’s a time the communities can’t afford to forget. That December morning, experts say, will be repeated more frequently in the years ahead.

Front Street, which borders the river and lies much lower than the rest of downtown, had flooded the evening before. Hallowell’s bulkhead — where the famous colorful Adirondack chairs sit for much of the year — was already covered by several feet of water. The Kennebec River was rising by nearly a foot every hour.

Joyall called his wife, Lexi, who checked on the river’s flood gage predictions — and it did not look pretty. The duo, who co-own the store, scrambled to take action.

“I did a quick U-turn around, she booked it up there, and then we spent the rest of the day watching as that graph kept projecting it to go higher and higher for flooding,” Joyall said. “We were just in the shop, doing whatever it was we could — we took out some of our most expensive items, fearing that we were probably going to see some water come into the shop by that point.”

Floodwater soon lapped at the doorsteps of Water Street storefronts and completely inundated Front Street basement spaces.

And the river was still rising.

The town center of Hallowell was unreachable on the afternoon of Dec. 19, 2023, with both sides of Route 201 closed and cars coming from Gardiner being directed to turn around. Emily Duggan/Kennebec Journal file

10:30 a.m., Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023

Kennebec River at 19.27 feet: major flood stage

Joyall spent the rest of the morning moving merchandise and watching the flood gage read higher and higher. Business owners up and down Water Street had the same idea — many scrambled to get their belongings to higher ground. Upstairs, up the hill — anything would do.

Down the street, Joyall saw volunteers, including Mayor George Lapointe, moving stock out of Vignettes of Maine — a gift shop near the corner of Water and Wharf streets — as the business took on water.

Chiseled into the building across Wharf Street, notches marking Hallowell’s biggest floods from the past 200 years loomed over Lapointe’s parked pickup truck. Nine months later, this flood’s high-water point would be marked on that building — the fifth-highest ever recorded in Hallowell and the highest since 1987.

Joyall called across Water Street to make sure Michel-Paul Cyr, who owns Michel Paul Artist Studio, had all the help he needed while water crept up to his gallery’s back deck. Lapointe jumped from business to business, asking owners how he could help.

On Front Street, the Quarry Tap Room’s back patio was submerged in 8 feet of water. Easy Street Lounge was filled with water “to the rafters,” and it took months for owner Bruce Mayo to rebuild and restock, Lapointe said.

Joyall said he stayed at The Rusticators Emporium for several more hours, watching the water slowly rise outside. He said the store’s lights and heat, which had been out since the day before, flickered back on, even before the water stopped climbing.

“Oh, this is a reverse Titanic situation here,” Joyall said to himself.

9:30 a.m., Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023

Kennebec River at 17.97 feet: moderate flood stage

With power back on the western side of Water Street, City Manager Gary Lamb powered up the city’s computers and opened City Hall doors for business for the first time in two days.

The river had already noticeably dropped from its peak of 22.49 feet around 9 p.m. Tuesday, but roads were still impassable on the southern side of downtown until about midday, according to a memo Lamb wrote recapping the flood. Public works employees removed barricades and began cleanup, using the city’s snowblower’s power broom.

A swollen Kennebec River floods buildings on the back side of Water Street in Augusta after a severe rainstorm in December 2023. File photo courtesy of Dave Dostie

Much of downtown was covered in inches-thick silt that was “greasy as heck,” Lapointe said. Granite City Park, which had been underwater for about 36 hours, was caked in sediment. The building housing Vignettes of Maine and what was then Traverse Coffee Co. was lifted slightly off its foundation and required substantial structural work. The Quarry Tap Room’s outdoor stage had floated over a railing and onto Front Street. Several buildings in the southern part of downtown were evacuated due to a propane tank leak near Café de Bangkok. Floats from the boat launch had traveled downstream, despite being stored across the Water Street, away from the river. Merrill’s Bookshop lost eight tons of books.

Buildings on the western side of Water Street were mostly spared from the worst of the flooding, including Berry & Berry Floral, where Lapointe said he saw a “small puddle” inside during the worst of the flooding. The Rusticators Emporium, on the western side of the street, was kept mostly dry, too.

But on the eastern side of Water Street, closer to the river, flood waters were slow to recede, and power was still out through Wednesday night.

Lamb contacted Central Maine Power early Thursday morning, wondering when electricity would be restored and hoping businesses wouldn’t freeze up during the impending cold snap. He was told by customer service representatives that building owners and tenants would need to sign CMP’s post-flood power restoration form, signaling they understood the risks associated with turning power back on.

“Because so many of the services were inundated, they required this form to be filled out and signed by a master electrician who’d actually done an inspection,” Lamb said. “For obvious reasons, safety reasons; it could start a fire or hurt somebody.”

Lamb said he didn’t know about the form before the flood — buildings downtown hadn’t flooded this badly since he became city manager — but that city staff and other volunteers jumped in to contact relevant people as quickly as possible. Power was back on by Saturday morning.

“The critical part was people were going to have to drain their buildings,” Lamb said. “It was getting much colder after the waters receded and buildings were going to freeze up because they had gone for four or five days without power, and most of those places are relatively uninsulated. We were ecstatic that, right before Christmas, we got the power back on that Saturday.”

11 a.m., Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024

Kennebec River at 6.55 feet: well below flood stage

Almost exactly a year later, city officials’ fears about another river flood were growing. Conditions were similar to the December 2023 event: A powerful storm capable of dropping several inches of rain, rising temperatures, high winds that knocked out power to thousands and the potential for substantial snowmelt.

Lamb watched the flood gage predictions closely, and Lapointe mentioned in a City Council meeting earlier in the week that the city may have to deal with significant flooding again.

No such flood came.

But Maine State Climatologist Sean Birkel said events like last December’s will only get more severe with climate change.

“We’re much more uncertain about the frequency part,” Birkel, also a research assistant professor at UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, said. “However, as climate warms, we have seen an increase in the intensity of storms, and in particular with the amount of precipitation that these storms are producing.”

The Dec. 17-18, 2023, storm produced more than 3 inches of rain in most of the Kennebec River watershed. Warm, strong winds from the southeast created an “atmospheric river” event, which ushered massive amounts of rainfall, especially in central and western Maine.

When added to snowmelt, Birkel said, the conditions for widespread river flooding downstream were ideal.

“We have seen that a cold-season cyclone can produce this much flooding and damage, and in a warming world, there’s increased risk,” he said. “And so as we prepare in the future, we have to bear that in mind and incorporate that into our planning, especially at the state and municipal level.”

Lapointe said, while Hallowell does not plan on building a seawall to keep floodwaters out, city officials can take some steps to improve emergency response and prepare for future flooding events.

He said he and other city leaders should lean on the U.S. Geological Survey’s river gage — which Joyall watched intently during the flood and which Lamb said was “worth its weight in gold” — as a useful resource during floods. He said he would also like to standardize the city’s automatic emergency notification system for downtown businesses and residents and learn more about flood prediction, so the city is not scrambling to respond.

The water level from last year’s December flood is carved in a granite corner piece of the building at the intersection of Water and Central streets in downtown Hallowell. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

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Lapointe said it took two to three months for downtown Hallowell to feel normal after the December flood. Several businesses were closed for extended periods of time, and others never came back.

Some received aid from a City Council-approved relief fund, which directed $50,000 to businesses, with a cap of $2,000 per business. Others got help from private fundraising: One Quarry Tap Room employee’s husband raised more than $10,000 for the staff’s lost wages.

Vision Hallowell — a downtown support organization of which Joyall was recently appointed president — distributed more than $17,000 to downtown businesses following a monthslong fundraising campaign with other Hallowell community groups. The city matched that fundraising with another $17,000, which also went out to businesses impacted by the storm.

Lapointe said it would be easy for the city to beat itself up over its response to the flood. Not all business owners and tenants on Water and Front streets were on the city’s emergency contact list. Power restoration took longer than hoped. Lamb faced criticism for not invoking the city’s emergency management ordinance — which would have convened an eight-person committee of city leaders to coordinate response to the flood — but Lamb said the committee had never met, was not trained in emergency response and likely would not have been any more effective.

But above all the controversy and frustration, Lapointe said Hallowell should be proud of how it responded: The community came together to support its downtown, he said, in a relatively short amount of time.

“When there’s only so much you can do, people help out,” he said.

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A home at 2005 Summerhaven Road in Sidney on Saturday is clear of the police tape that cordoned it off Friday while Maine State Police and local officers investigated the killing of a 14-year-old boy. A woman was arrested after reporting to the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office that a crime had occurred at the home early Friday morning. Ethan Horton/Kennebec Journal

SIDNEY — One day after a woman was arrested in connection with the homicide of a 14-year-old boy, residents of a residential neighborhood were left with more questions than answers, as police continued to withhold information about the boy and what exactly happened.

Police had left 2005 Summerhaven Road in Sidney by Saturday morning. There was little sign of the daylong investigation at the home Friday as snow flurries fell on a bitterly cold day.

Brady Maheux, 25, said he has lived his whole life on the windy, residential road near the Augusta-Sidney line, but did not know the people who lived in the house under investigation Friday.

“How does something like that happen?” said Maheux. “What the hell happened? It’s crazy.”

Megan McDonald, 39, was arrested Friday afternoon and charged with murder, Maine State Police said in a statement issued Friday evening. The arrest came after police found a 14-year-old boy dead outside the Summerhaven Road residence, state police said.

Megan McDonald Courtesy of Kennebec County jail

The Office of Chief Medical Examiner in Augusta determined the cause of the boy’s death as “a combination of asphyxiation, manual strangulation, and sharp force injury,” according to state police. The medical examiner’s office also ruled the manner of death as homicide.

Investigators were seen throughout the day Friday working at 2005 Summerhaven Road, a single-story home, with a detached garage flying a U.S. Marine Corps flag.

Town tax records list the property’s owner as Megan McDonald.

State police said they were called to investigate after Kennebec County sheriff’s deputies conducted a wellbeing check and found the dead teenager. The deputies were asked to conduct the check after a woman reported an incident at her home to the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office, according to state police.

Why the incident was reported there was not known Saturday. Just before 5:30 a.m., “an adult female arrived at the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office to report an incident that occurred at her home,” state police said Friday.

The Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office, in Auburn, is about a 40-mile drive from the Summerhaven Road residence in Sidney, according to GPS mapping.

Androscoggin County Sheriff Eric Samson wrote in a message Saturday the woman who reported the crime in the Sheriff’s Office lobby was taken into custody, though he did not release that woman’s name. Samson referred further questions to a state police spokesperson.

Before police announced the homicide investigation Friday, Carl Gartley, superintendent of Regional School Unit 18, had sent an announcement to community members earlier in the day that a Messalonskee High School student had died. Sidney is one of the towns served by the Oakland-based district.

“Due to an ongoing police investigation, we are unable to release a name at this time,” Gartley wrote Friday.

Police and school district officials remained tight-lipped about the 14-year-old boy’s identity through the weekend, and it was not clear if the Messalonskee student who died was the one found dead on Summerhaven Road.

“I was hoping to release the name yesterday (Friday) but it’s ultimately up to the AG’s Office,” Shannon Moss, public information officer for the Maine Department of Public Safety, wrote in an email Saturday.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Maine Attorney General, which prosecutes all homicides in the state, did not respond to a message Saturday.

A woman retrieving her mail outside her home on Birch Circle, around the corner from the Summerhaven Road residence, said she knew the boy killed in the alleged homicide, but did not want to share any details publicly about him or provide her name until police release the name.

Several state police cruisers and a large Maine State Police Evidence Response Team box truck are parked at 2005 Summerhaven Road in Sidney on Friday afternoon. State police say they discovered the body of a 14-year-old outside of the home early Friday morning. Megan McDonald, 39, was taken into custody and charged with murder. Keith Edwards/Kennebec Journal

Another man, who has lived on Birch Circle for about 30 years, said he was cordial with the people that lived at the home where police were investigating but did not know them well. He was not sure how many people lived there and never knew them by name.

He called them “decent folks” and said he would see them if their dog got loose or when he was walking his dog in the area.

“There has been nothing that would’ve led you to believe there was anything wrong,” said the man, who declined to give his name because he did not want attention from other neighbors for speaking to the news media.

“Had we known, would we have done something?” he continued. “Of course.”

At several other nearby homes, residents either were not home Saturday morning or did not answer the door. Others who did answer the door said they did not know much beyond the information released by state police.

Maheux, the 25-year-old Summerhaven Road resident said he did not even hear or see police investigators arrive in the morning.

“I believe I was awake at that hour when they had gotten there,” Maheux said. “I never heard anything in the morning hours either.”

It is usually a quiet neighborhood, he said. “Nothing goes on out here.”

A neighbor of Maheux, who declined to provide his name, said the same, but recalled at least one other major incident nearby in recent years: a double homicide of an Augusta couple, found dead in the woods in Manchester, on Christmas Day in 2015. That killing was found to be related to drug dealing.

More information about Friday’s alleged homicide could emerge Monday, when McDonald would likely appear in court. If she remains in custody Monday, McDonald would be expected to make an initial court appearance in Kennebec County.

At that initial appearance, usually a brief hearing, a judge would read McDonald the charge against her. McDonald would not be required to enter a plea then, since prosecutors first need to present their case to a grand jury for an indictment before it could move forward.

It was not known Saturday if McDonald has an attorney. That information in Maine is only available through court clerk’s offices, which are closed on the weekends.

At Messalonskee High School in Oakland, about 14 miles north of the Sidney neighborhood, counseling sessions were available from 9-11 a.m., according to the announcement from school administrators.

Around 1 p.m., it was quiet around the school as a snow flurry fell. Only a handful of cars were in the parking lot, and there were no signs of any kind of memorials placed by community members.

“As we travel through our break, if you are in need, please do not hesitate to reach out for support,” the high school said in a Facebook post Saturday. “We are Messalonskee Strong.”

The post offered several resources:

• National Alliance on Mental Illness Maine: 1-800-464-5767, info@namimaine.org, call or text 988

• The Crisis Text Line: text “Home” to 741-741

• Crisis and Counseling Centers: 1-888-568-1112 or 207-626-3448

Sun Journal reporter Joe Charpentier contributed to this report.

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As the harsh winter weather sends New Englanders to celebrate the holidays indoors, there is no better way to get in the festive mood than with a blanket, a mug of hot cocoa and a holiday movie – and for Hallmark, there is no better setting for a holiday movie than a small New England town.

In fact, many of the channel’s holiday films are set in Maine. Whether set in real towns like Bristol or the fictional St. Ives, the aesthetic snowy backdrop and charming small-town feel Maine is known for make the state the perfect setting for a feel-good holiday flick.

Here are 8 Hallmark Christmas movies set in Maine that are available to watch this season, in order of worst to best rankings from IMDb.

In “Nostalgic Christmas,” Anne returns home for the holidays to the fictional town of North Bay, Maine to help her dad sell his toy store and retire from his wood-carving career. When Anne must co-chair the town’s Christmas celebration with handsome widower Keith, she questions whether her future is back in New York or right there in her hometown.

IMDb rating: 6.3

Where to watch: fuboTV, Prime Video premium, Hallmark+, 1/1/25 at midnight on the Hallmark Channel

“The Wishing Tree” follows Evan Farnsworth, a professor at a boarding school in Maine who offers to teach the students left behind during Christmas vacation. After one of the students gets into trouble and threatens Evan’s job, a magical wishing tree decorated with handwritten Christmas wishes brings the professor and his students closer together.

IMDb rating: 6.3

Where to watch: Peacock, Pluto TV, fuboTV, Prime Video premium, Hallmark+

After breaking up with her longtime boyfriend and getting short term amnesia, Lucy returns home to the fictional Bedford Harbor, Maine for the town’s Christmas celebration, where she rediscovers herself.

IMDb rating: 6.5

Where to watch: fubo, Prime Video premium, Hallmark+, 12/28 at 8 p.m. on the Hallmark Channel

Holiday movie schedule: Hallmark’s ‘Countdown to Christmas’ has started. Here’s the schedule

Set in Bristol, “Cranberry Christmas” tells the story of separated couple Dawn and Gabe who pretend to be happy in their marriage to help save the town’s annual Christmas Cranberry Festival put on by their family cranberry farm.

IMDb rating: 6.5

Where to watch: Prime Video premium, Hallmark+, 12/24 at 8 a.m. on the Hallmark Channel

“Let it Snow” follows Stephanie, a resort executive played by Candace Cameron Bure of “Full House,” as she prepares a renovation proposal for Snow Valley Lodge, a Maine resort which her father’s resort company has just acquired. Faced with tension with the property guide Brady, the need for approval from her detached father and a Christmas Eve deadline, Stephanie must decide whether she wants to continue in her Grinch-like ways or embrace Christmas tradition and “let it snow.”

IMDb rating: 6.6

Where to watch: fuboTV, Philo

New this year, “A Novel Noel” tells the story of a burnt out book editor from New York City who takes a temporary job at a bookstore in fictional St. Ives, Maine over the holidays. While there, she rediscovers her passion for creativity and finds love with the annoying son of the bookstore’s owners.

IMDb rating: 6.6

Where to watch: fuboTV, 12/27 at 8 p.m. on the Hallmark Channel

In “Fallen Angel,” successful Los Angeles lawyer Terry must return to his estranged father’s home in Maine after he passes, leading Terry to confront his traumatic memories and reconnect with a woman from his past.

IMDb rating: 7.0

Where to watch: Pluto TV, PLEX, Prime Video premium, Hallmark+

More New England Hallmark movies: There are two Hallmark Christmas movies set in New Hampshire. How to watch them

Taking the highest ranking for Hallmark Christmas movies set in Maine is “Time for Them to Come Home for Christmas,” which follows a woman with amnesia as she travels from a hospital in fictional Covington, Maine to a Christmas tree lighting in South Carolina in hopes of rediscovering her identity.

IMDb rating: 7.2

Where to watch: Prime Video premium, Hallmark+, 12/26 at 6 p.m. on the Hallmark Channel