PORTLAND (AP) – Peter Cottontail will be hopping down a bunny trail better suited for a snowshoe hare this Easter Sunday.

A combination of more than 100 inches of snow and an early Easter means it’ll likely be the first time in 23 years that there’s snow on the ground Easter morning in Portland, said Tom Hawley of the National Weather Service in Gray.

As a result, the Easter bunny will be maneuvering around snowbanks, and some Easter egg hunts have been moved indoors or canceled because of a blanket of white.

“It’s kind of crazy,” said the Rev. Gordy Johnson, associate pastor at the Portland Faith Center in Gorham, where the traditional egg hunt has been moved indoors. “Normally we do it outside. But obviously weather-wise, it’s not going to happen.”

At Woodfords Congregational Church, organizers are moving theirs indoors as well. “We’re going to err on the side of caution,” said organizer Cathleen Allen.

And neighbors in the Capisic Street neighborhood have canceled their Easter parade and egg hunt altogether.

“This year is kind of tough because there’s two feet of snow down there,” said Steve Wanzer, who dons an Easter bunny costume.

Easter has always been dicey when it comes to the weather in northern New England, and a snowier-than-normal winter means there’s still plenty of it. As of Monday, 14 inches of snow clung to the ground in Portland, and it’s unlikely it will melt by Sunday despite warmer temperatures in the forecast, Hawley said.

All told, Portland has recorded 102 inches of snow, well above the average of 59 inches.

In Concord, N.H., the season’s snowfall totaled 80 inches – more than 20 inches above normal. Ditto in Burlington, Vt., where there was 90 inches of snow – 18 inches above normal.

Not everyone is moving indoors, though. Despite the snow, organizers plan to stick to the tradition of holding an outdoor Easter egg hunt at Fort Knox, a granite fortress in Prospect that overlooks the Penobscot River.

Volunteers will use snowblowers to create paths for Saturday’s hunt featuring 4,000 colored eggs hidden on the grounds.

“We’ll see just how tough Maine kids are,” said Leon Seymour, executive director of Friends of Fort Knox, which organizes the event. “They have had a whole winter to practice playing in the snow. So we think they’ll be ready.”

Weather woes easily can be exacerbated by an early Easter like this year.

The formula, something of a mystery to most folks, dates to A.D. 325 when astronomical full moons were computed for the Christian church. Easter was set as the first Ecclesiastical full moon after March 20.

It’s unclear when a bunny with colored eggs hopped into popular culture surrounding the Christian holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But the bunny and eggs have long served as symbols of new life in spring.

As for the weather, people in northern New England have learned to go with the flow. The Friends of Fort Knox considered delaying their Easter egg hunt until April, but they decided it just wouldn’t be the same.

“We thought that postponing it would not be an option,” Seymour said. “It’d be like going trick or treating on Thanksgiving.”