Just before noon Thursday in Dixfield, the snow was at 20 inches and still falling.
“It’s wet and heavy,” said treasurer Angela Varnum at the Dixfield town office. “I could barely get out of my driveway.”
Dixfield had the highest snow tally of the morning at the National Weather Service in Gray after an overnight storm dumped anywhere from an inch at the coast to over a foot inland.
Meteorologist Tom Hawley said among the rolling totals, Lewiston had received 5 inches, Bridgton 8.8 inches and Farmington and Eustis 16.5 inches.
He anticipated one more inch would fall before the storm wrapped up mid-afternoon.
The forecast called for a low of zero degrees Thursday night in Lewiston, warming to the mid-40s by Saturday and more cold next week with no major snowfall on the horizon.
“I’d be hesitant to say it will be our last” storm, but it could be, Hawley said.
The state’s seen more than two feet of snow above normal so far this winter: Portland had measured 79.6 inches by midnight, 27.3 inches above average.
At 11 a.m., Central Maine Power had storm-related outages down to 4,424 customers, nearly half of them in Oxford County. Somerset County was the second-hardest hit.
At noon, the speed limit remained dropped down to 45 mph for the length of the Maine Turnpike, according to a spokeswoman.
The turnpike had seen just two accidents during the storm, when a tractor trailer jackknifed and blocked north-bound traffic around midnight near Kennebunk and in the morning when a vehicle slid into the median near Biddeford.
kskelton@sunjournal.com
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- Melissa Blaisdell bundles up against the cold and snow as she walks down Ash Street in Lewiston to the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul for the morning rosary. “It’s treacherous out,” said Blaisdell who decided to walk instead of drive. “I don’t think there will be too many people there, but let’s hope we have three or four.”
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