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Arthur was downgraded from a hurricane to a post-tropical storm Saturday morning by the time it reached the Maritimes, but it still packed a punch, causing widespread power outages in parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Environment Canada measured wind gusts topping 116 kilometres per hour in the Halifax area.

Fogarty predicted the rain would surpass the 150-millimetre mark in Saint Stephen, N.B., on the U.S. border.

Mike Gange lives in Fredericton, one of the hardest-hit areas. He described hearing the buffeting winds tear down a maple tree in his front yard, damaging roof tiles and a rain gutter as it fell.

“(There was) a great big crack and then the whole front of the house got real dark because this 40-year-old tree split in half,” said Gange.

Gange’s home was not the only one in the New Brunswick capital that was damaged due to the storm.

“I drove around today and we must have seen 25 houses with big, big trees down — there were a couple of spaces where the trees are down so much that you can’t go up and down the (road),” he said. “In one place you couldn’t get through there if you had an army tank.”

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Gange said he has not seen weather this severe in his 41 years in Fredericton.

“It’s like a Tasmanian devil ripping through your backyard,” he said. “It’s crazy here … at times it rains so hard you can’t see 10 feet in front of you.”

The hurricane centre said the storm would end in the Maritimes overnight then track through the Gulf of St. Lawrence toward Newfoundland on Sunday.