TURNER — It’s not a competition, of course. But if it were, Turner would have edged out Lewiston and points south.

That’s according to schoolteacher Sue Conklin, who says Turner got more snow than Lewiston and she has the technology to prove it.

“We had a couple more hours of snow,” Conklin said, “that Lewiston just didn’t get.”

Not that it was minor league snow in Lewiston, where a respectable 9 inches fell before the storm moved on. That was more than enough to cause traffic problems and send folks scrambling for their shovels and snowblowers.

In the Lewiston area, the storm began winding down around noon. Meanwhile, in towns to the north and west, the snow kept coming.

“You could actually see a straight line where the storm ended,” said Conklin, who monitors the weather with her family and posts the data at southturnermaineweather.com.

 The scene throughout the day was reminiscent of December or January, not the day before Thanksgiving.

The Maine Turnpike issued a winter advisory Wednesday morning reducing top speeds from 65 mph to 45 mph from Biddeford to Augusta.

The storm was a trial run for 57 state plow drivers in Western Maine, said Norman Haggan, manager of the Maine Department of Transportation shed in Dixfield.

Crews hit the roads by 4 or 5 a.m. and were still plowing and sanding by 3 p.m., although Route 2 was bare and wet outside the MDOT office.

Haggan said drivers were contending with packed powder for the most part.

“We haven’t had any mix at all that I know of,” Haggan said. “It wasn’t as serious as what they had predicted. We didn’t get the accumulation in the mountains, so far anyway, that they predicted, so that’s good.”

A tractor-trailer that jackknifed on Route 117 on Streaked Mountain in Paris on Wednesday morning closed the road to traffic until it was removed, Haggan said.

Traffic was minimal during the storm.

“We haven’t had any issues with extreme traffic,” Haggan said.

“I think many people must have traveled last night and the bulk of them that didn’t are waiting until this afternoon because they had a good forecast from the media saying it’s going to be over by then,” he said.

“Another good thing, many schools are having teacher workshops today, so there are no school buses out,” he said.

Despite packed snow that caused traction problems, mostly at intersections, there were no accidents all day in Rumford, police dispatcher Sue Milligan said by late afternoon.

As is always the case, one man’s misery is another man’s bliss. Such was the case at Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry where just about everyone was ecstatic over the early snow.

“It’s amazing how much a little powder can liven anyone’s spirits,” was the message posted on the Sunday River website Wednesday afternoon. “This is Happy Place times a thousand.”

And while Turner did get a half-inch more snow than Lewiston, at the end of the day, they did not top the snowfall charts. Fifteen inches were measured in West Fryeburg and 11 inches were reported in Wilton.

Portland saw mostly rain overnight that turned to wet snow by Wednesday morning, but it was still snowing hard inland and a winter storm warning was in effect for much of the state.

By mid-afternoon, the storm had ended across the region and was barreling into Aroostook County, according to Mark Bloomer of the National Weather Service.

At the peak of outages, 14,200 Central Maine Power Co. customers were without power as heavy, wet snow brought down lines. Crews were out in full force throughout the day and by noon, that number dropped to 10,000.

By nightfall, a full 95 percent of customers who lost power had it back on. Shortly before 5 p.m., the number without electrical service was estimated at 1,249, mostly in Lincoln, Sagadahoc and Cumberland counties.

“Crews have made good progress today, despite motor vehicle accidents and tree contacts that caused some new outages,” CMP spokeswoman Gail Rice said.

Crashes were reported just about everywhere, the majority of them minor. Most schools and universities closed down in advance, with plenty of warning that the storm would be big.

The Bangor Daily News contributed to this report.

Storm chasing in Turner

www.southturnermaineweather.com

“All of the data on the website is automatically entered except for the snow total. We do that manually, periodically throughout the day. You will see a weather camera from the top of our garage looking out over Turner (although it may be hard to see through fog or snow.) You can view the weather videos back to April 2006. There is also a camera showing our driveway and a bit of our front yard that is live streaming video. It can be accessed by the left hand navigation bar. We also have a local links page.”

– Sue Conklin

Snowfall totals

Durham: 10

Turner: 9.5

Lewiston: 9

Fryeburg: 15

Bethel: 10

Wilton: 11

National Weather Service, Gray

Copy the Story Link