Across Franklin County on Friday, power lines succumbed to the weight of heavy wet snow and came crashing down.
In front of Mt. Blue Middle School in Farmington, lines struggling under the burden of snow shot out sparks and set the poles themselves on fire.
In other areas, cars slipped and slid in the slush and skidded off roads.
Meanwhile, in Lewiston-Auburn, it was mostly just a light drizzle and the wind was hardly blowing. For most of the afternoon, it looked like just another wet and chilly spring day in the Twin Cities.
How the storm appeared Friday depended on where you were and what time it happened to be.
“I mentioned a few weeks ago that we entered silly season,” wrote Mike Haggett, of Pine Tree Weather, “and this is a silly storm.”
Franklin County seemed to get the heaviest blow from the storm that left parts of New Hampshire under 8 inches of snow.
By midday, roughly 8,500 Central Maine Power customers were without electricity as lines came crashing down. Of that number, 7,400 were in Franklin County, the bulk of them in Farmington, Jay and Wilton.
CMP was prepared, though and by 4 p.m., they had that number whittled down to just 750 outages statewide. By 7 p.m., that number was down to 141 CMP customers without power.
Across the rest of the state, the storm remained fickle into Friday night. Was it a rainstorm or a snowstorm?
“Some areas may see precipitation whiplash at times,” Haggett wrote, “as the snow and rain flip-flop back and forth as the cold air from aloft tries to take over atmospheric dominance.”
According to the National Weather Service in Gray, coastal locations and lower elevations saw primarily rain, while higher elevations switched to snow.
Precipitation in one form or another was expected to last overnight and into Saturday.
Throughout the day, fire departments were called out for flooded basements and other water problems. A few scattered reports of crashes were reported as cars and trucks slid off roads.
Wet roads contributed to three vehicle crashes that occurred within an hour Friday morning because of hydroplaning, according to Maine State Police.
The crashes happened between 5 and 6 a.m. on the Maine Turnpike in rainy conditions. Several lanes of the turnpike were closed early Friday after a 15-passenger van hydroplaned and crashed into the guardrail at Mile 15 southbound in Ogunquit.
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