BANGOR, Maine — Just as Mainers expected to warm up slightly from the dangerous Arctic weather that blasted the state Friday, a storm was expected to dump a hazardous mix of snow and freezing rain over the weekend.
While canceling its wind chill advisory late Friday afternoon, the National Weather Service office in Caribou issued a new winter weather advisory for mixed precipitation across the state, with snow Saturday morning changing to sleet and freezing rain late Saturday night into Sunday morning.
Between 2 and 4 inches of snow could fall in northern, central and eastern Maine and 3 to 6 inches to the south before changing over, with subsequent ice accumulations of about one-tenth of an inch making for hazardous driving conditions, the weather service indicated.
Temperatures were expected to increase to about 10 degrees early Saturday before rising to about freezing by midmorning Sunday.
That might seem relatively balmy compared with the subzero temperatures accompanied by strong winds that made it feel as low as minus 40 degrees in northern Maine on Friday, according to the National Weather Service.
The winds also downed trees on utility lines, knocking out power to thousands of Mainers in both Central Maine Power and Emera Maine territories.
As many as 13,000 CMP customers, mostly in Piscataquis County, were without power at about 11 a.m. Friday, but utility crews scrambled in the bitter cold to restore power to all but three customers by early evening.
Nearly 6,000 Emera Maine customers along the coast in Hancock County lost power Friday morning as well, but crews had all power restored by midafternoon.
Wind chill and winter storm warnings were in effect Friday for much of the northern United States — as far west as Montana and Idaho through the Midwest to New York, Massachusetts and Maine.
While the Northeast was expected to warm over the weekend, forecasters warned Midwesterners to brace for another icy blast.
Temperatures in Chicago were expected to plummet below 2 degrees on Sunday, possibly breaking the 1983 record for the coldest NFL game ever played in that city’s Soldier Field stadium.
Boston’s morning low of 4 degrees on Friday was the coldest for that date since 1883, when the mercury dipped to 1 degree, according to the National Weather Service.
Schools were closed in Worcester and Lowell, Massachusetts, because of the frigid conditions.
State police in Connecticut warned pedestrians and drivers of icy conditions, saying on Facebook, “If you are driving a sleigh you may be fine, but most of us rely on our own two feet and/or four wheels.”
While the weather was frigid, no records were set in Maine on Friday, according to meteorologist Nikki Becker of the weather service office in Gray.
“For Portland, the record was negative 9 [degrees] for today,” she said. “It was 1 or zero [degrees] this morning.”
For Bangor, where the record is minus 27, the mercury dropped to minus 9, said Becker, who added that wind chill records are not something tracked by the weather service.
Friday’s frigid air didn’t stop Marc Webb from selling Christmas trees, boughs and wreaths from Sprague’s Nursery & Garden Center’s stand at the edge of the parking lot at Nicky’s Cruisin’ Diner on Union Street in Bangor.
“It’s been pretty brutal. Business has kind of slowed down quite a bit because of the cold,” Webb said as Christmas music from the diner played in the parking lot.
“As you can tell, the wind is the bad part. If it weren’t for the wind, I don’t think that it would be so horrible,” said Webb, who moved to Maine from Florida six years ago so he and his wife could raise their daughter in a place with less crime.
Meanwhile, members of Young People in Recovery were handing out hot coffee and hats, scarves, mittens, gloves and boots from a table they set up near the bus depot at Pickering Square.
“It’s so exciting. It’s very cold, and people need warm stuff, so we’re here,” member Cynthia Bain said.
“I have a home to go to. I’m in recovery. It’s actually been two years and six months that I’ve been sober today,” she said, adding, “I was homeless. Now I’ve got to give back what was given to me.”
The cold snap didn’t seem to phase William Beaulieu, 74, of Madawaska, who has been pumping gas at Valley Fuel Stop for the past four years.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said while taking a break inside the store. “I love it.”
The trick to staying warm, according Beaulieu, is to keep one’s hands and feet warm. In between attending to customers outside, he places his gloves under a heater inside the store. And, a pair of warm wool socks, which were a handmade gift from a regular customer, help keep his feet toasty, he said.
“I am well appreciated here,” Beaulieu said.
Frenchville Public Works Director Eric Blanchette is lucky enough to have a heated building in which to park and repair Frenchville town equipment. That came in handy Friday, as temperatures in the St. John Valley dipped well below zero. The wind, however, proved to be the worst part, blowing snow around and making the chill that much deeper.
“We pushed back some snow drifts this morning, on the back roads,” Blanchette said. “It wasn’t too bad.”
Bangor police were prepared for the weather and were keeping an eye out for people in distress but had nothing to report by 11 a.m.
“It is business as usual,” Sgt. Tim Cotton, spokesman for the department, said in an email. “No special arrangements for us, as this is expected.”
Cotton also added a couple ways to prepare for the cold.
“We urge everyone to make sure that they have plenty of fuel in their vehicle, cover any exposed skin, keep a blanket or two in the car and don’t let their auto club membership lapse just in case they need a battery boost,” he said. “Mainers are resilient and deal with this every year.”
Dana Saucier of the Fort Kent Public Works department took a short break from plowing town sidewalks Friday morning to buy a banana and a hot drink at the Irving Circle K on Main Street.
“When the work’s gotta be done, we gotta go,” he said as the wind pushed snow around outside and made it feel like minus 35. “We gotta clear the roadways and make sure the public can go — the school buses, ambulances and firetrucks.”
The trick to keeping warm while clearing snow with his Massey Ferguson tractor, he joked, was to “stay in the cab where the heat is.”
Fort Kent Public Works Director Tony Theriault said that in some ways working in subzero temperatures has its advantages.
“A vehicle has really good traction when it’s cold. When it gets up to 25 to 30 degrees, tires don’t have as much traction,” he said.
Extremely cold weather also affects what substances the department uses to improve traction on the roads.
“If it’s zero degrees and below, sometimes you can put salt all you want and it just doesn’t work; it doesn’t activate. That’s why every once in awhile you see us put sand. At least the sand is gritty and you get traction like that,” he said.
The wind is far more challenging than the cold, because it blows already plowed snow back onto the sidewalks and roadways, according to Theriault.
“The wind is the worst thing,” he said.
Marianne Hannigan, 54, of Houlton said her husband had to give her 15-year-old Honda Civic a boost after the battery died early Friday.
“Wouldn’t you know it, this is the first time this has happened since I’ve had that car,” she said, laughing. “I have to be to work at 5 a.m., and he is always telling me to get rid of that car, but I love it. It has started plenty of other times on cold mornings. I thought for sure it would start and it almost did, but it sputtered a bit and just died.”
She said that as she sat waiting in her “toasty warm” house while her husband fiddled with her car, she could hear a few choice words coming from his mouth.
“But thankfully, I didn’t hear those three-letter words: ‘new car,’” she joked.
BDN writers Nok-Noi Ricker, Dawn Gagnon and Jen Lynds; St. John Valley Times writer Don Eno; Fiddlehead Focus writer Jessica Potila; and Reuters contributed to this report.