AUGUSTA – A powerful pre-winter storm left thousands of northern New Englanders without power Sunday amid bitterly cold temperatures, while sending motorists skidding off highways and forcing air passengers to wait out the blowing snow, sleet and freezing rain.
In the Lewiston-Auburn area, snowfall totals ranged from 5 to 7 inches by early Sunday night.
Aaron Scalia, Auburn’s highway supervisor for public works, said crews salted roads Sunday morning and began plowing about 4 p.m. Plowing was expected to continue through the night. Scalia expected roads to be clear by this afternoon.
In Lewiston, crews were also plowing into Sunday’s evening hours and roads were generally passable but slippery in places.
Both cities had parking bans in effect.
Most motorists heeded advice of state police and sat out the storm at home, and scores of meetings and church gatherings were canceled. Scattered accidents, none causing serious injury, were reported through the day on the Maine Turnpike and other regional highways.
Visibility as the storm from the Midwest revved up in the far Northeast was less than 200 yards, police said. Winds gusted to a point where “if there’s a car in front of you, you can’t even see it,” said Sgt. Andrew Donovan of the Maine State Police.
In neighboring New Hampshire, police reported dozens of cars off the highways while plows were out in force trying to keep up with the storm. The slippery road conditions couldn’t keep everybody at home.
“We like the snow,” said Betty Gould, gesturing to her companion Rocky Castellano as they shopped in the Steeplegate Mall in Concord, N.H. “He thinks he’s invincible. He has four-wheel drive, studded tires, the whole bit.”
The pair drove about 20 miles from their home in Pittsfield, N.H., to do a little Christmas shopping, and had the store almost to themselves.
Wind, snow or freezing rain took their toll as the day went on, knocking out power to nearly 8,000 customers in Vermont’s Rutland and Bennington counties.
In Maine, Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. reported nearly 1,600 outages Down East, while the state’s largest electric company, Central Maine Power, reported only a handful of outages. No figures were available in New Hampshire.
At Manchester (N.H.)-Boston Regional Airport, more than two dozen arriving and departing flights were delayed or canceled Sunday morning due to heavy snow and freezing fog. In Maine, most of Portland International Jetport’s inbound and outbound flights were canceled, said city Transportation Director Jeff Monroe. Amtrak trains were still running during the storm, he said.
All available plow trucks were trying to keep up with the quickly accumulating snow in Vermont, said Reggie Brown, highway department dispatcher in Montpelier.
“Everybody’s out and running,” said Brown, who reported accumulations of about 10 inches in southern parts of the state by early afternoon. “They can’t tell how much because it’s blowing so hard.”
Snow also piled up fast in Maine, with a foot of powder in the mountains by late afternoon and 5 to 10 inches elsewhere, according to the National Weather Service.
Perhaps the most forbidding conditions were seen atop Mount Washington in New Hampshire, at 6,288 feet the region’s tallest summit, where weather observer Stacy Kawecki reported 60 mph winds gusting to 68 mph, a 2 degree temperature, blowing snow and freezing fog.
Bitterly cold temperatures accompanied the storm. Morning temperatures in the single numbers in many areas had moderated to the teens by late afternoon in Augusta and Caribou.
Staff writer Autumn Merritt contributed to this report.
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