More than 14,000 customers are without electrical services tonight, the result of a series of thunderstorms that hammered the northwestern part of the state.

John Carroll, spokesman for Central Maine Power Co., said lightning strikes damaging transmission lines and downed tree limbs falling on power lines are the most likely cause of the outages.

Carroll said CMP is still assessing the damage and there are no estimates as to when power might be restored.

The hardest hit counties were Kennebec, Somerset and Oxford. Kennebec reported more than 4,000 outages, Somerset had 3,500 and Oxford totaled just over 2,000 outages.

Reports of outages started coming in around 6 p.m.