March storm howls across region

In less than a week, it will be spring.

Technically, anyway. On Tuesday, it looked like just more winter as a late-season storm blew into the area, dumping more than a foot of fresh snow across the region.

It started late morning and by noon in the Lewiston-Auburn area, there was already enough to shovel. As the day wore on, the storm intensified with heavier snow and a quickening wind.

By the afternoon commute hour, it was white-out conditions and the snow kept pilling higher — weather officials said the snow was falling at up to 4 inches per hour in some areas. In and around the Twin Cities, 4 inches were on the ground by 4 p.m. One hour later, there were 7 inches. By nightfall, more than a foot was on the ground and the storm showed no sign of slowing.

“Let’s just hope,” said Lisanne Heyward of Sabattus, “this is the last snowstorm of the season.”

With winds shrieking and snow piling up, Central Maine Power officials said they were prepared to tackle outages. By 7 p.m. Tuesday, roughly 30,000 CMP customers had lost power, almost all of them in York County. A few were reported in Oxford, Androscoggin and Franklin counties.

“Every hour of every day, we are prepared to respond to power interruptions, but in a case like this, all employees throughout the company are on heightened alert,” said Sara Burns, president and CEO of CMP. “Our customer relations centers, line crews, and other personnel are prepared, and we have materials on hand to repair any damage to our electricity delivery systems.”

Earlier in the day, the storm knocked out power to 100,000 homes and businesses along the East Coast. Some states, including New York, declared it a state of emergency.

The National Weather Service in Gray had been forecasting the storm for more than a week. By the middle of the afternoon Tuesday, the storm seemed right on schedule and weather officials were advising that it would get worse before it got better.

“Expect whiteout conditions at times with winds gusting to 35 mph or higher,” the NWS announced on its Facebook page at about 3 p.m. “This will create extremely dangerous travel conditions. It is best not to travel if at all possible.”

They weren’t kidding. In Androscoggin County, winds during the storm were measured at up to 45 mph. On the coast, gusts of up to 60 mph were recorded. With snow both falling and blowing, visibility was down to a quarter-mile, according to the National Weather Service.

Police reported accidents and disabled vehicles just about everywhere. It might have been worse — police said it didn’t hurt that everything from courts to town offices were closed, that some businesses opted to close up early and events of all types were canceled.

In Lewiston and Auburn at the peak of the storm, there seemed to be more people walking in the snow than driving in it. Still, police were called out for numerous reports of cars stuck in ditches, on hills or in the middle of busy throughways.

In Auburn at about 5:30 p.m., six cars were reported off the road along one stretch of Hotel Road. There was no crash, nobody was hurt, but a half-dozen drivers found themselves hopelessly stuck at the side of the road.

In Sabattus, police and fire crews shut down a section of Sabattus Street, near High Street, after several cars and trucks slid off the road just after 7 p.m.

The Maine Department of Transportation said at about 7 p.m that several drivers on both sides of the highway were stuck on I-295 from Freeport to Bowdoinham.

In the could-be-worse department, the observatory on Mount Washington in New Hampshire reported winds of up to 110 mph throughout the day and snow falling at five inches per hour. They were expecting up to three feet.

Back on flat ground, there seemed to be two schools of thought on the storm — there were those who are fed up with the snow and happy to voice their complaints, and those who shrugged it off as just typical Maine weather, cruel and unpredictable.

“It’s winter. It’s Maine. Deal with it,” said Garett St. Pierre of Auburn.

“Enjoy winter while lasts,” advised Carey S. Clark, of Arrowsic. “Before long, we will be complaining about black flies, mosquitoes, humidity and ticks.”

“I’m seriously sick of the white stuff,” Sandy Rozanski of Auburn said. “I love snapping pictures of it but enough is enough. I am looking for spring warmth.”

The storm, for some, was particularly hard to take so soon after three weeks of unseasonably warm weather in February — a period where temperatures topped 40 degrees.

“It’s March,” said Wayne Heyward of Sabattus. “Snow is not a surprise even if we did have a three-week false spring.”

By 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Lewiston-Auburn had 14 inches of snow on the ground. Parts of Cumberland County, including Bridgton, recorded 17 inches, while in most parts of Oxford County, just under a foot had fallen.

Ultimately, most Mainers were grinning and bearing it, even as they brushed off their cars and shoveled their driveways for the second, third or fourth time that day. It’s just a week until calendar spring, after all. Surely the worst is behind us and meanwhile, the latest blizzard was in some ways a fitting farewell from winter.

“It’s beautiful!” declared Wendy Lee Hutchins of Andover. “And it will go away quickly. And it will help the drought that is still an issue despite the amount of snow this winter. I’m tired of hearing people whine about it. This is Maine. We are so fortunate to not have tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, mudslides, sinkholes and poisonous snakes and insects. I have lived other places and found Maine to be the absolute best!”

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Brenda Colon of Monmouth fights high winds as she makes her way to her car in the parking lot of JC Penney in Auburn on Tuesday. Colon works at the department store and she was allowed to go home two hours early because of the storm.

Joshua and Carmel Howes walk through their Auburn neighborhood with their two sons, Declan, 10, and Aidan, 7, during Tuesday’s snowstorm. “Every storm we get, we take a couple of walks during the course of the storm,” Carmel Howes said.