A powerful nor’easter blew into Maine after midnight Monday, and by this morning, layers of ice, sleet and snow created treacherous driving conditions that prompted hundreds of cancellations across the state.
At the National Weather Service in Gray, meteorologist Tom Hawley said that the storm’s effect ranged from rain to freezing rain along the coast to snow in Aroostook County. Hawley says travel conditions may not improve until Wednesday.
“Now it looks like we’re going to see off-and-on sleet and maybe some light freezing rain through the morning and into the afternoon before we start to see temperatures at the shore start to rise above freezing and get the coastal communities above freezing,” he says. “So that that will change to rain there, but in the interior it looks like it’s going to be mostly a sleet event right through the day and into tonight.”
The Maine Legislature, schools and businesses remained closed throughout the day as the storm raged on.