Icy storm sweeps through Maine Snow, freezing rain leave thousands without power

A winter storm swept across Maine on Sunday like a quick-change artist, shedding 6 inches of snow, sprinkling some freezing rain and blowing down enough tree limbs to shut off the power to 15,000 Central Maine Power customers.

A second low pressure system was expected to bring additional snow to the state through today. That should remain snow throughout all the state, except along the coast. In the northern portions of the state, the total accumulation could be as much as a foot.

The worst accident Sunday was in Houlton, where a teenager died and 10 other people were hurt in a crash on U.S. Route 2A. In Hudson, a youth managed to escape when his vehicle rolled into a brook. In Dover-Foxcroft, two people were sent to a hospital after a Route 16 accident.

The snow moved into the state late Saturday night as the result of a low pressure system that brought storm conditions to much of the East Coast over the weekend. The snow did not begin in northern Maine until Sunday morning. It remained snowy throughout the day north of a line running from Houlton to Millinocket and southwest from there.

“This was a fairly typical early winter storm,” said Duane Wolfe, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Caribou. “This time of year, we generally get a changeover along the southern zones while in the north it usually stays snow.”

Any snow not washed away by rain will likely remain on the ground, Wolfe said. A series of “clipper systems” should keep most of the state fairly cool, with night temperatures dropping into the 20s and temperatures during the day reaching no higher than the mid-30s.

An estimated 15,000 CMP customers were without electricity Sunday afternoon, and the number remained steady as freezing rain coated tree limbs and power lines, said spokesman Kevin Howes.

Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. reported scattered outages, mostly in Greenbush.

Dozens of cars slid off highways and speed limits were reduced to 45 mph on the Maine Turnpike and Interstate 95.

About 10 a.m. Sunday, a teenager managed to escape a cold dunk in Hudson when the Ford Bronco he was driving slid off the Whitmore Landing Road in Hudson and rolled 5 feet into a brook. It came to rest upside down in the brook, but the youth wasn’t injured. State police would not identify him.

Police in northern Penobscot and Piscataquis counties reported just one other accident involving injury to people. Two people were hospitalized after a car rolled over on Route 16 in Dover-Foxcroft, according to a dispatcher at the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department. The identity of the two people and other details about the accident were not reported.

The nor’easter swept a large part of New England, dropping 3 to 6 inches of snow in New Hampshire’s northern mountains and blowing cold rain across New York’s Long Island.

Wind gusted up to 35 mph on Long Island, where 7,000 homes and businesses lost power, according to the Long Island Power Authority.

More than a half-inch of ice had accumulated in parts of northern and western Connecticut, and more than 130,000 Northeast Utility customers were without power at the height of the outages there.