After a brief respite from the spate of storms that hit Maine in February, Oxford Hills on Tuesday got more snow, sending local highway departments out on the road again.
Norway Road Foreman Jim Tibbetts said “everybody’s been busy” ahead of Tuesday’s storm, and he has all of his trucks on the road.
“Everybody has their plow routes ready, and the roads are all pre-salted,” Tibbetts said.
He said a parking ban throughout town is in effect from 6 p.m. Tuesday to noon Wednesday.
“What we’ve found is that people throughout the town have been putting their vehicles at the edge of the road because they don’t want to shovel their driveway,” Tibbetts explained. “By putting the parking ban in place, it makes it easier for the department to plow.”
Tibbetts said he and his crew pre-salted roads in the morning, before the snow started falling, and they were “waiting for enough snow to get on the road before getting out there and scraping.”
An employee with the Oxford Highway Department said about all of the drivers are on the road, plowing, and the roads have been sanded.
All of the town’s equipment is running well and ready to go, the employee said.
According to scanner traffic, a vehicle rolled over on Gore Road in Otisfield, but Fire and Rescue personnel were not called to the scene because the driver was pulled from the vehicle and was not injured.
Even before there was a flake in the air, the School Administrative District 17 in Paris, Regional School Unit 10 in Rumford-Mexico and The Boxberry School in Harrison canceled classes Tuesday.
“This storm presents some challenges today,” the SAD 17 Facebook post read. “Heavy snow is coming in sooner than expected making an early release too risky. Snow will appear fairly light at first but is expected to hit hard around 11 a.m. Hate to say it but … no school today in the Oxford Hills!”
SAD 17 Superintendent Rick Colpitts advised the board of directors last week to wait and see if there would be any more snow days before taking action on making them up.
Some of the town offices in the area, including Otisfield, were closed for the day, while others, such as Norway and Paris, announced on their Facebook pages that they would close early.
By noon on Tuesday, snow was falling hard in Norway, but it created a pretty wintry view of Pennesseewassee Stream.
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