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By From staff and wire reports April 05, 2007 02:48 PM

Gov. John Baldacci signed an emergency declaration this afternoon to allow power crews from other states to come in and help restore power to the roughly 94,600 homes and businesses which lost power in today’s storm.

The declaration also waives federal rules to allow power crews to work longer hours, which should help speed up the job of restoring power to the estimated 278,363 people affected by the outages.

The problem, said John Carroll, Central Maine Power spokesman, is that other northern New England states were struggling with their own outages, particularly New Hampshire.

Mainers continued to dig out from the spring storm that dumped up 18 inches of heavy wet snow over parts of the region, bent trees to the ground and knocked down power lines.

Carroll said many customers would be in the dark into Friday and the cleanup could continue for days.

Most of the power outages were concentrated in the areas in and around Brunswick, Alfred and Portland. At noon the tally of customers without power included: Alfred, 36,000, Farmington, 90, Lewiston, 1,690, Bridgton, 4,000 Portland 15,000, Brunswick, 30,000, Rockland, 2,200, Dover, 90, Skowhegan, 440 and Fairfield, 2,400.

To the north, the impact appeared far less severe. Bangor Hydro-Electric reported more than 4,000 outages.

The outages started at about 3 a.m. and but appeared to level off by noon. Still, said Carroll, it could be several days before power is restored everywhere.

He said in some cases restoration could be as simple as resetting the circuit on a line where power was interupted because of a drooping tree limb. But in other cases restoration could take longer if power poles were snapped. Crews were still assessing the damage in the early afternoon, a process that could continue into the evening, Carroll said.

The spring storm was payback for the mild December and January, when the ground was bare and green, of course.

“I have been telling everyone we have eastern Dec. 25 and now we are going to have Christmas on Easter,” said Butch Roberts, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Gray.

The collective gasp of surprise at the April accumulation was almost audible as commuters woke up to discover cars buried under a heavy, wet blanket and the hot water heater on the blink thanks to downed power lines.

As some Mainers scrambled to relocate shovels and gloves stowed away for the season, public works crews worked to clear roads while many school children and public school staff got the day off.

The National Weather Service was predicting the snowfall would stack up as third heaviest in April on record by the time it completely wound down. Snowfall tallies ranged from as little as 3 inches along the coast at Kittery Point to 18 inches in Wilton and Hartford. The Portland International Jetport received 11.6 inches.

A winter storm warning, lifted in the late morning in southern Maine, was expected to remain in effect until evening in the extreme north.

The snow arrived early Wednesday evening and built up strength during the night, falling at a rate of an inch or two an hour.

It was slow going for motorists, with numerous reports of vehicles off the road. Police said the death Wednesday of Meagan Sisto, 17, in a two-car collision on a slippery road in her home town of Topsham may have been weather-related.

The highest snow accumulations were in the western foothills and along the coast. The snow was expected to extend the spring skiing season at several western Maine resorts that got off to a slow start because of the early winter warm spell.

Portland plow crews started work on the storm at 2 p.m. Wednesday, salting, sanding and clearing streets, said Michael Bobinsky, public works director. Fallen trees and power lines complicated matters early today, blocking roads in several sections of Maine’s largest city.

“It was our largest response to a storm this season and perhaps in the last few years,” Bobinsky said. “The city has been going around the clock.”

This was Portland’s 11th plowable snow storm this season, Bobinsky said. He usually budgets for 8 to 10 “plowable events.” Before this storm, Portland had received about 40 inches of snow this season, about half of what is usually gets, he said.

Despite the overtime costs associated with this storm, which have yet to be calculated, Bobinsky figures his $771,500 snow budget is OK. The city’s snow dump on Somerset Street, however, is full, he said. As a result, city dump trucks must haul snow from the downtown peninsula to another site on outer Congress Street.

To assist with the cleanup, there will be a citywide parking ban from 10 p.m. today to 6 a.m. Friday.

While some Mainers were observed frolicking and photographing the heavy snow, others eager for spring greeted the weather with mixed feelings.

At Broadturn Farm in Scarborough, organic farmer John Bliss was musing about why a spring snow is called ‘the poor man’s fertilizer’ and assessing the impact of the snow of his gardens, where hoped to put his early peas in on April 14.

“Obviously that won’t work, ” he said.

Golfers were not particuarly pleased by the weather, said Roger Densmore, general manager at Sable Oaks Golf Club in South Portland which was supposed to open this week. Now that would not be happening, said Densmore.

“It’s quite depressing,” said Densmore.

The timing of the storm was bad for businesses that sell shrubs and trees, but good for those that cut them down.

O’Donal’s Nurseries in Gorham had a truckload of young maples, lilac and forsythia on the ground, ready for sale. Nearby, bottlebrush bush and other tender plants were covered with a blanket against a foot of heavy snow.

“This time last year we were selling these plants,” Jeff O’Donal said. With cold weather in the forecast through the next week, he predicted customers would be scarce for the next week or two.

“We’re losing $30,000 of income and maybe $50,000 next week,” O’Donal said.
Anyone with a bucket truck and chain saw was busy Thursday.

David MacDonald, president of Whitney Tree Service, had six trucks out by early morning. Most of the calls were coming in from the Portland area and south coast, where wet snow had toppled trees onto homes and cars. In Cape Elizabeth, the company was working at homes where uprooted evergreens had fallen on a roof.

As tree damage goes, MacDonald said, this storm was a bad one. Damage was localized, but heavy.

In Portland Jon Blanchard, who returned from Florida on Wednesday, was awakened Thursday morning by the sound of tree limbs snapping under the weight of the heavy snow. Soon, he was back in the groove of life in Maine. He had fired up the snow blower and was clearing a path on the sidewalk in front of his house in Portland.

“I hate it,” Blanchard said during a break from blowing snow. “That’s why I spent the whole winter in Florida.”

Most people out and about inPortland were taking the storm in stride. In fact, most said they enjoyed it.

“I like it. I like having the day off,” said Leo Haferman, 10, happy the Portland public schools were closed for the day. He said the heavy snow was ideal for the snowball fight he and his mother, Kelley Drolet, had with neighbors on Munjoy Hill and for the snowman they were making. “It’s good snow,” Leo said.

Efrain Anzures, 34, who moved from Brooklyn, N. Y. to Maine three years ago, said he wasn’t fazed by the storm.

“Whatever Mother Nature gives out, I’ll go with that,” said Anzures, who was shoveling a sidewalk outside a Monument Square building. He said shoveling was good exercise. “It saves me a lot of money at the gym,” he said.

Jason Jones, 35, waiting for a bus on Congress Street, said snowstorms are expected in April. “I’m a Maine native,” he said. “Wait five minutes and the weather will change.”

However, Sharon Wasnis, 38, waiting at the same bus stop, said the storm surprised her. “Where baseball season is starting,” she said. “You would think there wouldn’t be snow.”

Snowfall in April is not that unusual, but the volume of snow in this storm was relatively rare. In Portland, a snowfall of 10 or so inches in April happens only once every 20 years, said meteorologist Steve Capriola. Nor is a snowfall in May unknown. On May 11, 1945, 5 inches fell in Portland.