Here’s Why We’re Fairly Certain The WBLM Tower Will Not Blow Over Tonite

We get the question every time a big hurricane or tropical storm gets within earshot of Maine. "Are you concerned that your antennae tower will fall down because of the wind?" Great question, considering that at one point the tower in beautiful Raymond was the tallest man-made erected structure in the US. Tropical Storm Isaias is expected to bring 40-60 mph winds between 8 pm tonite and 4 am Wednesday. CMP is getting ready with extra crews. We should be ok here at the WBLM studios, as all our power to One City Center is underground. Out at the tower, as long as we have power we should be ok. And even if we lose power at the tower, we will still be streaming on the WBLM App, so definitely download that!

Now, about the wind. No worries. The Blimp tower in Raymond can handle winds up to 152 miles per hour. And at that wind speed, the top of the tower can sway 6 feet in either direction and still stay up! We use over 22,000 feet of guy wire to keep the tower straight. And with the extreme length of all that wire, we need 100 acres of land!

OTHER AMAZING FACTS ABOUT THE WBLM/WGME TOWER

• The tower was built in 1959
• It is guyed on all three sides at anchor points 1200 feet from its base
• It has an elevator that can carry 3 people
• The tower weighs 520,000 pounds
• There are over 13,000 bolts used in construction and the Captain and Celeste go out there every weekend to tighten them up (not true).

This sucker is taller than the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument.

It's soooo tall that people used to Base Jump off the top! The insurance company put the kibosh on that!