A tranquil autumn turned yesterday to blustering winds and drenching rain, as three men were hit by a lightning strike in Meredith and more than two dozen communities statewide faced power outages.

Gusts were expected to reach 50 miles an hour last night. A wind advisory was in effect for New Hampshire as well as parts of Maine and Vermont.

"We pretty much have it up for everybody," said Andy Pohl, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine. "There's pretty much nobody that's going to get spared."

In Meredith, the three men were standing next to a pickup in the Meredith Center Co-op mobile home park when they were hit by lightning about 4 p.m., a witness said.

The lightning bolt struck with a loud crackling noise, Boden said. She knew something was wrong when a girlfriend of one of the men started screaming.

The three were thrown nearly 10 feet, Boden said. One man was unconscious for several minutes. An ambulance took them to Lakes Region General Hospital in Laconia.

Mary Boden identified the men as Steve Valley, Jim Black and Jesse Zagrante, who were helping remove carpet from the home of Laurie Sirles.

Sirles called her from the hospital to report Valley was still experiencing pain in his left side, Black was complaining of pain in both sides of his chest and that Zagrante couldn't hear out of his right ear and was still disoriented.

There were other lightning strikes in the same Meredith Center area, according to Meredith Deputy Fire Chief Tom Joslin. He said one blew siding off a home on Dow Road, but no fire resulted.

And lightning was just one of the problems seen yesterday as winds downed limbs and wires.

Trees blocked roads and crashed into houses and cars. Fire crews scrambled from one problem to the other.

In Derry, wind caused a large tree to fall on a 2-story home at 12 Grandview Avenue early last night.

Fire officials said no one was hurt when the tree fell, but it did break through the roof, splintering some rafters and landing on load-bearing walls. Crews were working last night to shore up the house.

Public Service of New Hampshire reported scattered outages in nearly 30 communities.

The largest pocket was in the area of Newport and New London in the state's west, where 1,200 customers were without power, said Sue Blothenburg, a PSNH spokesman.

Elsewhere, problems were reported in the areas of Hooksett and Bedford, Hollis and Hudson and Hinsdale and Swanzey.

There were an estimated 1,800 outages statewide, though several regional stations had not begun reporting problems, Blothenburg said.

In Coos County in the north, the cold front made passing snow a possibility.

"I hope not," said Allan Carr, a selectman in Lancaster. "I'm not a lover of winter."

The thermometer at his home remained at 40 degrees last night. Carr said snow has yet to fall this season, though he saw a dusting on Mount Washington when he drove by it.

At Plymouth State University, a fire broke out about 5 p.m. at an attached barn at Holmes House, likely caused by a lightning strike, fire officials said.

Firefighters knocked the flames down within 10 minutes. Damage was limited to a barn wall and the interior hallway of the attached building, with a repair estimate of about $10,000.

The storm was caused by a easterly moving cold front that draped across New Hampshire.

It was expected to taper off early, though today should see partly cloudy skies and winds of 20 to 25 miles an hour, Pohl said.

Last night, Concord posted a gust of 38 miles an hour, while Laconia and Manchester hit 48 miles an hour.

Though trees were down, wind blew and rain gushed, Laconia held onto its electricity, said police

Sgt. Matt Canfield.

"I know the fire department's going crazy in the towns just north of us," Canfield said. "But here in Laconia, we seem to have escaped."

In the Queen City, the fire department was called to bail out basements and handle fallen trees, but problems weren't extensive, said James Burkush, a district fire chief.

Union Leader Correspondent Russ Choma contributed to this report.