Heavy downpours and strong gusty winds slammed into the Portland area Tuesday morning, knocking out power to tens of thousands of Central Maine Power customers.

At about 11 a.m., the company’s website was reporting about 22,000 outages. Just before 9 a.m., that number was 28,000.

CMP’S Catharine Hartnett joined WGAN Tuesday morning. She said trees can be very unstable when the ground is so saturated. She said they have been battered all winter, and it doesn’t take much to knock them over and potentially take out some power lines.

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service office in Gray issued a coastal flood advisory from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday.

There was even some snow in the forecast for the hills and mountains, where light accumulations were expected.