Cold temperatures today are expected to harden the heavy, wet snow that fell throughout Friday and make some roads icy.
Temperatures were expected to drop into the teens leading into today, and north winds gusting to 35 mph will add to the chill, according to the National Weather Service.
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“Those winds are blowing pretty good, and in the morning it’s going to be quite slick,” said Mike Kistner, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray.
Public schools were closed for vacation Friday, so no classes were canceled because of the snowstorm, which dropped 9.4 inches in Portland. But high school basketball tournament games were postponed because of the messy weather.
The storm tracked farther to the south than had been expected, so there was little if any rain in most of the state.
The wet, sticky snow accumulated on tree branches, snapped some limbs and caused power outages. Central Maine Power Co. reported scattered outages throughout the day — 3,600 homes and businesses in York and Cumberland counties at one point in the morning — but crews were able to keep up with them.
CMP added line crews in case gusting wind overnight caused more outages, said spokesman John Carroll.
Police reported one serious crash.
Charles Waddell Jr., 47, of North Waterboro was critically injured when the pickup truck he was driving vaulted the median guardrail of the Maine Turnpike in York at 6:30 a.m. The southbound truck overturned at least twice before coming to rest in the northbound lanes.
Waddell was not wearing a seat belt and suffered serious head injuries, Maine State Police said.
In another turnpike accident, a state police cruiser was struck in Portland when a car slid into the rear of the cruiser while the trooper was out investigating a crash. Nobody was injured.
Emergency dispatchers reported that many cars slid off roads. A multi-car crash on Tukey’s Bridge in Portland snarled the evening commute there.
“The roads are very bad,” said Portland police Lt. Jim Sweatt during the storm. “We’re having a tough time getting around ourselves.”
But the slick roads led to very few accidents on city streets.
Gov. Paul LePage ordered state offices — except in Aroostook County — closed at 3 p.m. to give state employees time to drive home in daylight.
Today’s clear and windy conditions will give way to more precipitation.
“We’ll see a weak system moving through on Sunday. We’ll get maybe 1 or 3 inches out of it,” Kistner said. “It’s a real fast mover. We call them Alberta clippers.”
A more dramatic change is likely to occur Monday afternoon, when a storm moves north along Lake Ontario, sucking wet, warm air into Maine.
The state could get as much as an inch of rain, Kistner said.
The highest elevations in the mountains will have temperatures close to freezing, but snowboarders and skiers may well be looking back fondly at this week’s snow conditions.
Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:
dhench@pressherald.com
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