By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

A 24-hour storm that produced heavy wet snow cancelled school for School Administrative District (SAD) 61 on Tuesday and knocked out power to a few thousand households in the area.

On Wednesday morning, there was a two-hour delay of the bus route schedule and the start of school for both SAD 61 and schools in neighboring Oxford County.

As of Wednesday morning, the towns of Bridgton, Naples and Casco still had scattered power outages. According to the Central Maine Power (CMP) website, there were 701 customers without power in Bridgton, 428 in Casco, and 507 in Naples.

According to Casco Town Manager Dave Morton, the power outages have not yet caused anyone to seek emergency shelters.

“So, if we have calls [to the town office] and people need a place to go, we will set them up at the community center or the library or the fire station,” he said. “We have actually had no requests.”

However, the utility company has had a presence in the community, he said.

“CMP had a whole yard full of trucks here today,” Morton said. “So, I don’t know if we still have that many people without power.”

“I don’t know snow fall totals because we had several inches of snow, and then it rained. It turned the snow into a really slushy mess,” he said.

With this most recent storm, the snowfall amounts ranged from town to town by a half-foot or more. Closer to the coast, in Portland, the snow accumulation was only 1.5 inches. That is compared to more inland communities like Raymond, which had an unofficial measurement of 7.5 inches of snow, and Bridgton, which received 6.5 inches of snow.

An official measurement of 7.9 inches was taken by the staff at the National Weather Service (NWS) in Gray. That measurement was done at 9:45 a.m. on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Bethel had measurements ranging from 6 to 9 inches. At 6 a.m. on Tuesday, a NWS employed recorded 6.8 inches in Otisfield.

Later in the day, those snowfall totals condensed as the snow switched to rain.