A coast-hugging nor’easter blew into Maine on Tuesday, causing huge snowdrifts, minor flooding and a smattering of wrecks, including a car-oil truck collision in Hancock County that injured three people but avoided a fuel spill.

While Aroostook County and most of northern Maine had only gray skies to complain about, parts of midcoast and Down East Maine reported 6 to 8 inches of snow.

Few power outages were reported in central and eastern Maine.

“The storm did what we expected,” said Frank Terrizzi, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou. “It stayed on the coast and stayed in the southern sections. … It never tracked up into this part of the state. We had two [pressure systems] that merged offshore and pulled the storm away from land to the southeast.”

Still, word of the storm kept plenty of businesses closed for the duration.

“Business has been great,” said Belfast businessman Ted Rakis in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “I could retire and go south for the winter after today.” His mostly quiet Alexia’s Pizza was one of the few places open for business Tuesday in downtown Belfast.

Banks and some stores sent their employees home early, while many places in the city never bothered to open. Most state offices were closed, and the Legislature canceled its Augusta committee sessions.

High winds and swelling seas associated with the storm prompted the Maine State Ferry Service to cancel its Rockland schedule, though the ferry Margaret Chase Smith continued to ply the roiling waters between Lincolnville Beach and Islesboro.

Blizzard warnings were given for Cumberland, York, Androscoggin, Kennebec and Waldo counties. Snow accumulations included 1 inch in Gouldsboro, 3 inches in Dover-Foxcroft, about 4 inches in Bangor and Ellsworth, 7 inches in Belfast and more than a foot in the Portland area.

With the bulk of the storm at sea, the U.S. Coast Guard reported little activity offshore. Most mariners apparently heeded storm warnings the night before and stayed in port. “We’ve been doing more shoveling than anything else,” said Seaman Adam Dawson of the Rockland Coast Guard station. “It’s been quiet all day.”

He said seas were well over 17 feet during the height of the storm and that winds ranged from 25 knots in Penobscot Bay regions to gusts of 60 knots on Matinicus Island. A dozen families in Kennebunk were evacuated because of coastal flooding.

The region’s electric companies reported few problems from the storm. At midafternoon Tuesday, Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. customer service supervisor Carolyn Miller said there were just two outage reports, from Orland and Eastport.

“We have not had any significant problems, very few storm-related incidents,” Miller said. “Out of 110,000 customers, that’s not bad.”

Mark Ishkanian of Central Maine Power Co. said the utility experienced a major outage in York, where 2,300 customers were without power for part of the day. Ishkanian said weather contributed to the outage, which occurred at a major substation.

“It actually was not as bad as we thought it would be,” Ishkanian said. “We’ve had some minor outages but they’ve been widely scattered. We thought we’d be having our hands full but that didn’t happen.”

Of course, anytime blowing snow piles up along the state’s roads and highways, there are bound to be accidents. In Portland, a half-dozen vehicles were involved in a pileup on Interstate 295 Tuesday morning. There were no serious injuries.

A storm-related accident on a snow-covered road near Green Lake in Dedham in Hancock County sent three people to the hospital.

Jenny Soucey, 28, of Eddington was apparently driving too fast for conditions – about 3 inches of new-fallen snow – when she lost control of her Subaru and skidded into a fuel oil truck. Scott Adams, 38, an R.H. Foster Co. driver from Bangor, was at a near-stop in his lane when Soucey shot around a blind curve and hit the truck’s front bumper head-on Tuesday morning.

Damage to the truck was minimal and the fuel tanks did not rupture. Soucey was believed to have suffered a broken arm. Her 7-year-old daughter, Sierra, was belted into the back seat and suffered a leg injury. Pascual Serrano, a 22-year-old Massachusetts man, was riding in the front passenger seat and complained of back pain, according to Maine State Police Trooper Jason Sattler.

A Parkman family escaped serious injury when their vehicle hit a frost heave on Route 15 in Guilford and rolled over. Milinda Easler, 35, the driver; her husband, Gerald; and children Justin, 11, Morgan, 3, and Ethan, 2, were wearing seat belts when the vehicle went out of control.

Easler and her husband complained of minor injuries, but their children were fine.

In Thomaston, Robert Bernier, 41, of Thomaston was hospitalized after losing control of his 1996 Chevrolet Blazer on a slick Old County Road near Morse’s Corner and hit a utility pole. He was treated and released.

In Belfast, Andrew Soule, 18, of Searsmont was driving east on Route 3 when his 1993 Chevrolet pickup hit a patch of ice and did a 360-degree spin into the path of Kimberly A. Chase, 29, of South China, who was driving a 1995 Isuzu Trooper in the oncoming lane. Chase hit the back of Soule’s truck and both vehicles skidded to the shoulder. Chase complained of neck and shoulder pain and both vehicles had to be towed from the scene.

NEWS reporters Diana Bowley, Misty Edgecomb and Leanne M. Robicheau and The Associated Press contributed to this report.