The Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter down­grad­ed Hur­ri­cane Lee to a post-trop­i­cal cy­clone but mil­lions of peo­ple re­mained un­der storm watch­es and warn­ings ear­ly Sat­ur­day as the storm still could pro­duce hur­ri­cane-force winds, tor­ren­tial rain and coastal flood­ing.

Se­vere con­di­tions were pre­dict­ed as a pos­si­bil­i­ty across por­tions of Mass­a­chu­setts and Maine and hur­ri­cane con­di­tions could hit the Cana­di­an provinces of New Brunswick and No­va Sco­tia, where the storm had been pre­dict­ed to make land­fall lat­er Sat­ur­day.

The storm was lo­cat­ed about 230 miles (365 kilo­me­ters) south­west of Hal­i­fax, No­va Sco­tia, and about 220 miles (355 kilo­me­ters) south­east of East­port, Maine on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

There were more than 11,000 pow­er out­ages from Mass­a­chu­setts to Maine ear­ly Sat­ur­day. The wind had picked up and rain moved in­to east­ern Mass­a­chu­setts.

The hur­ri­cane cen­ter pre­dict­ed hur­ri­cane-force winds ex­tend­ing more than 100 miles (161 kilo­me­ters) from Lee’s cen­ter with less­er but still dan­ger­ous trop­i­cal storm-force gusts up to 345 miles (555 kilo­me­ters) miles out­ward.

States of emer­gency were de­clared for Mass­a­chu­setts and Maine, the na­tion’s most heav­i­ly forest­ed state, where the ground was sat­u­rat­ed and trees were weak­ened by heavy sum­mer rains.

Cruise ships found refuge at berths in Port­land, while lob­ster­men in Bar Har­bor, Maine, and else­where pulled their cost­ly traps from the wa­ter and hauled their boats in­land, leav­ing some har­bors look­ing like ghost towns on Fri­day.

Lee al­ready lashed the U.S. Vir­gin Is­lands, the Ba­hamas and Bermu­da be­fore turn­ing north­ward and heavy swells were like­ly to cause “life-threat­en­ing surf and rip cur­rent con­di­tions” in the U.S. and Cana­da, ac­cord­ing to the hur­ri­cane cen­ter.

Parts of coastal Maine could see waves up to 15 feet (4.5 me­ters) high crash­ing down, caus­ing ero­sion and dam­age, and the strong gusts will cause pow­er out­ages, said Louise Fode, a Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice me­te­o­rol­o­gist in Maine. As much as 5 inch­es (12 cen­time­ters) of rain was fore­cast for east­ern Maine, where a flash flood watch was in ef­fect.

But even as they hun­kered down and pre­pared, New Eng­lan­ders seemed un­con­cerned by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of vi­o­lent weath­er.

In Maine, where peo­ple are ac­cus­tomed to dam­ag­ing win­ter nor’east­ers, some brushed aside the com­ing Lee as some­thing akin to those storms on­ly with­out the snow.

“There’s go­ing to be huge white rollers com­ing in on top of 50- to 60-mph winds. It’ll be quite en­ter­tain­ing,” Bar Har­bor lob­ster­man Bruce Young said Fri­day. Still, he had his boat moved to the lo­cal air­port, say­ing it’s bet­ter to be safe than sor­ry.

On Long Is­land, com­mer­cial lob­ster­man Steve Train fin­ished haul­ing 200 traps out of the wa­ter on Fri­day. 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 Cana­da, Ian Hub­bard, a me­te­o­rol­o­gist for En­vi­ron­ment and Cli­mate Change Cana­da and the Cana­di­an Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre, said Lee won’t be any­where near the sever­i­ty of the rem­nants of Hur­ri­cane Fiona, which washed hous­es in­to the ocean, knocked out pow­er to most of two provinces and swept a woman in­to the sea a year ago.

But it was still a dan­ger­ous storm. Kyle Leav­itt, di­rec­tor of the New Brunswick Emer­gency Man­age­ment Or­ga­ni­za­tion, urged res­i­dents to stay home, say­ing, “Noth­ing good can come from check­ing out the big waves and how strong the wind tru­ly is.”

De­struc­tive hur­ri­canes are rel­a­tive­ly rare this far to the north. The Great New Eng­land Hur­ri­cane of 1938 brought gusts as high as 186 mph (300 kph) and sus­tained winds of 121 mph (195 kph) at Mass­a­chu­setts’ Blue Hill Ob­ser­va­to­ry. But there have been no storms that pow­er­ful in re­cent years.

The re­gion learned the hard way with Hur­ri­cane Irene in 2011 that dam­age isn’t al­ways con­fined to the coast. Down­grad­ed to a trop­i­cal storm, Irene still caused more than $800 mil­lion in dam­age in Ver­mont.

Sharp and Whit­tle re­port­ed from Port­land. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Rob Gillies in Toron­to con­tributed.

PORT­LAND, Maine (AP) —