Mainers spent most of Monday digging out from a massive winter storm, complete with heavy winds and whiteout conditions, that blanketed parts of Maine with more than 3 feet of snow.
The town of Eustis was walloped by 41.8 inches of snow in less than 24 hours — making it a doozy of a storm even by New England standards. According to Eric Schwibs of the National Weather Service, Eustis was in a band of heavy snow in “the sweet spot of the storm” across western Maine.
For residents, however, the snowfall wasn’t so sweet.
“I had to push my way out the door and it was above my waist in my driveway,” said Mark Humphries, manager of the Northland general store in the village of Stratton, which is part of Eustis. It took him three hours to clear the sidewalk in front of the store, he added.
The snowfall broke records all over New England, although no city or town came close to topping Eustis’ snow tally. Portland’s 14.5 inches surpassed the old record for the date of 12.4 inches in 1933, officials said. Bangor received 13 inches of snow, although that was not a record.
Elsewhere in Maine, Island Falls and Oakfield had 23 inches of snow, Houlton had 22 inches, Waterville 18 inches, Skowhegan 16 inches and Augusta 14.5 inches.
Before the storm even arrived, the National Weather Service issued a rare blizzard warning for eastern and northern Maine. Brooklin, on the Down East coast, recorded a gust of 59 mph, while much of eastern and northern Maine recorded gusts of 30 to 40 mph.
Strong winds and heavy snow knocked out electricity for about 4,600 Bangor Hydro-Electric Co. customers, most of them in Hancock County, officials said. Nearly all had power restored by late Monday afternoon.
In New Hampshire, Sunday’s storm added to the misery for hundreds of New Hampshire residents still in the dark more than a week after a crippling ice storm hit the region. At the peak, nearly 450,000 homes and businesses were without electricity in New Hampshire in the worst ice storm in the state’s history.
Although the storm sent dozens of cars and trucks sliding off roads, there were no reports of storm-related deaths. By Monday, a massive cleanup was under way across the region.
In western Maine, the cleanup included removal of a logging truck and a plow truck that blocked traffic on Route 201 at the U.S.-Canada border for more than 15 hours.
In the Katahdin and Lincoln Lakes regions of northern Penobscot County, police and firefighters reported only minor accidents and snow-related problems, and few of those.
East Millinocket firefighters said the biggest problem they faced was residents complaining about snow shoveled or blown onto their driveways by their neighbors.
Public works department crews in the regions began working as soon as the snow fell in volume and plowed for as many as 16 hours straight, some officials said.
They battled difficult conditions. Lincoln Public Works Department Director David Lloyd pulled his trucks out of one section of town for several hours because drivers reported blinding whiteout conditions, Town Manager Lisa Goodwin said.
At the Madawaska Police Department, Chief Ronald Pelletier said police had dealt with a few minor accidents.
“We have had a couple of accidents, but they’ve caused little damage and no one got hurt,” the chief said Monday morning. “The snow has stopped but the wind is picking up, and visibility is going down. We are hoping that people continue to stay off the roads.”
State police Sgt. Julie Bergan said Monday afternoon that troopers did not deal with a lot of accidents Monday, but they did field “quite a few” reports of cars off the road Sunday evening after the storm began.
“They just needed a tow back on the road,” she said. “It was nothing serious.”
In Pittsfield, Town Manager Kathryn Ruth was combating the chilliness of the morning Monday by turning on a small electric heater in her office. To her surprise, it caught fire.
She just happened to be talking to a firefighter on the telephone at the time and said, “I have to go and put out a fire.” She said the firefighter yelled, “We’re on our way.”
By unplugging the unit and stomping on it with her boots, Ruth was able to put out the blaze. She then took the heater into the office kitchen and put it in the sink, awaiting the firefighters’ visit.
The snow, meanwhile, ended by 8 or 9 a.m. in most parts of the state, according to Lee Foster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Caribou, although blowing snow remained a problem for most of Monday.
Foster said the next storm would occur Tuesday night into Wednesday, when a low-pressure system will move west of the state and bring snow across the north and mixed precipitation across Down East Maine.
“It will be a little messy on Christmas Eve,” said Foster. “There won’t be a lot of precipitation, but there will be enough to make it slippery.”
The days after Christmas are forecast to be significantly warmer, with a warm-up forecast for the weekend. Some parts of the state could see temperatures in the 40s.
BDN writers Jen Lynds in Houlton, Sharon Kiley Mack in Pittsfield and Nick Sambides Jr. in Lincoln and The Associated Press contributed to this report.