Friday’s forecast for several inches of snow is no April Fool’s Day prank.
In fact, if predictions hold true, Portland could break its single-day snowfall record for April 1, which was set more than 100 years ago.
Portland is expected to get 2 to 4 inches of snow from the storm, beginning late tonight and ending Friday. The precipitation is expected to turn to rain along the coast by Friday afternoon.
Maine’s foothills and mountains are expected to get a lot more snow, with the top amounts estimated to be 5 to 8 inches.
Portland’s snowfall record for April 1 is 3.5 inches, from a storm in 1899, said Margaret Curtis, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray. “Unfortunately, April snowstorms are not all that unusual,” she said.
Spring officially arrived March 20, and mild weather has melted most of the snow in much of the state. But city and state plow crews weren’t about to get complacent.
“We’ve been in Maine long enough to know better,” said Nicole Clegg, spokeswoman for the city of Portland. She said the plows have not been taken off city trucks and probably won’t be for a while.
Herb Thomson, spokesman for the Maine Department of Transportation, said this is the time of year when the department starts its transition to a new season, preparing to stripe roads and cutting back on the overtime that road crews log for snowstorms.
But he said it would be premature to start shutting down the department’s snow-clearing forces. “I can remember having snowstorms in May,” he said.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
