May snowstorm

Fifty-five years ago today residents of eastern and northern Maine awoke to a thick, wet coating of snow that closed schools, toppled telephone poles and ruined apple crops.

During one memorable night, May 10, 1945, and the following day, the promise of an early spring was dashed by an unforecast return to wintry weather. Damages in the most severe May storm in state history were substantial.

Raymond Hills of Winterport recalls hearing the news while stationed in England with the 8th Army Air Force. One day, between bombing runs over Europe, the B-17 tail gunner read a letter from his mother Mildred of Belfast, who wrote of power outages and apple blossoms covered in snow. Years later, Hills found this Bangor Daily News headline at the library: “Maine Paralyzed By Freak May Snowstorm; Damage Reaches More Than Million; Farmers Are Hard Hit.”

Sharing the front page with war news four days after the V-E Day announcement of the German surrender, the report of mother nature, not an Axis power, inflicting hardship must have seemed almost refreshing. Anecdotes of the storm’s fury, however, left no doubt of the emergency situation:

A salesman counted 51 poles down between Pittsfield and Newport, and 105 between Newport and Dow Field in Bangor. In Eastport, a torrential rain turned to snow, and later was accompanied by high winds. Between 15 and 17 inches of snow fell on Charleston and cars were unable to navigate throughout the afternoon. Telephone service was interrupted in Augusta, Waterville and Bangor, where 5,125 customers were cut off from the outside world.

On Wednesday, Georgia Higgins of Carmel, a home weather watcher for Maine television stations, recalls her father, Waldo Irving Philbrick, looking out the window on May 10 and remarking, “They’re talking about rain, but if you ask me, it’s cool enough to snow.” Minutes later the flakes began to fall, turning into heavy snow an hour later. In 24 hours the storm was only a memory and driveways and roadsides were covered in mud.

During this week of unseasonable warmth across the nation, imagine for a moment being buried in white in May. Interested, anyone?