FORT KENT, Maine — Don’t trade in those stocking caps for Easter bonnets just yet. According to the National Weather Service, northern and Down East Maine could be in for “significant snowfall” this coming weekend.
“There is the potential for a storm this weekend,” Tim Duda, meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Caribou office, confirmed Tuesday. “But there is still some degree of uncertainty with regard to where it will track.”
A low pressure system expected to move toward the region late Friday into Saturday could produce “plowable amounts” of snow along the coast and into Aroostook County if it tracks south across the Gulf of Maine and over the Bay of Fundy, Duda said.
Snow over the Easter weekend would not be all that unusual, Duda said.
“In northern Maine we typically average around 7 to 8 inches of new snow in April,” he said. “So this is not all that unusual.”
So far Caribou has seen 132 inches of snow this season, about three feet above the normal 100 inches, Duda said.
Bangor is close to 6 feet above normal with its 132 inches compared to the average 62 inches of snow it gets in a winter and snowfall records have been broken around the state.
Whatever snow does develop this weekend will likely be wet and has the potential to be heavy at times, accompanied by strong north winds, according to the National Weather Service’s forecast. The meteorologists didn’t put an estimate on any snowfall amount, but a hazardous weather outlook, posted Tuesday on the NWS website indicates “significant snowfall is possible.”
Regardless of whether it snows, temperatures on Easter Sunday will be unseasonably cold and will likely not get above the freezing mark across much of northern Maine.
Even if the coming weekend storm takes a more westerly track over Maine’s interior, the state could be in for a messy weekend with significant rainfall, Duda said.
“The key to this storm is really how it tracks,” Duda said. “We’ll be keeping an eye on it [and] there is certainly the potential for a snowy Easter egg hunt.”
