It didn't start snowing up in Portland until mid afternoon on Wednesday, but it was clear that things were going to go downhill really really quickly. I didn't realize how heavy it was snowing until one of my co-workers mentioned that I should probably get outta Dodge as soon as possible before I got snowed in. I wasn't keeping track of the weather or the time and it was 5:00pm when I peeked over the top of my cube to see the snow coming down outside. I dropped everything and sprinted out the door.

It was a mess and the snow was a thick wet heavy mess that made the roads really slippery. It took me almost twenty-five minutes to get from the office to the exit where I get onto Rt. 95 South; a drive that usually takes me about five minutes. I just knew I was in for a miserable commute.

Cars were going off the road all over the place; it was that bad. The snow was pounding down and the plows were having a hard time keeping up. The radio was predicting 8" to 14" along the coast and I was driving right into the teeth of it.

As I approached the Wells exit where I normally get off and go through the Berwicks to get to Dover, I considered staying on 95 to Portsmouth and then taking the Spaulding Turnpike up to Dover as if there is an accident on one of those smaller roads it just shuts everything down. But 95 was so bad - and getting worse the further south I drove - that I peeled off at the exit at the last second. Fortunately, the further west I drove on Rt. 9 and then Rt. 4, the less severe the storm was; it hadn't got that far inland as yet so I made it home ok, and probably far better than if I would have had I stayed on 95.

Marissa woke me up around 2:30am Thursday morning to let me know the power had gone out, but what can you do? I had turned the heat up before going to bed figuring that would happen. I knew that the temps wouldn't be falling too badly, and so the heat should be retained pretty good until things got fixed, so, I just went back to sleep.

I got up at 5:30 in pitch darkness. Couldn't shave or shower so just washed up and headed out into a really miserable blizzard. As you can see from the pictures that I took just before I left, the snow had really made a mess of things. I figured that the plow crews had the major roads under control and because the storm was supposed to end by late morning, so headed out.

This is a shot through the living room window before I left for work Thursday morning. It was a really dangerous ride through the Berwicks, but I just took it really slowly. Everything was so beautiful; picture perfect. But the weight of the wet snow was drooping the tree branches horribly and many were snapping off and falling everywhere - had to navigate around several in the middle of Rt. 9 getting over to Wells. And 95 was horrible - ice rutted and slippery as it could possibly be, though the plows had got the snow off for the most part.

A view through the side windows; the snow is really pilling up. By late morning, it stopped snowing and the ride home was fairly straight forward. But what a mess. A hundred-forty-thousand lost power in southern Maine, and about eighty-five-thousand in southern New Hampshire. It was still a slow go, and when I got home around 6:30 Marissa told me the power had just come back on around 5:30. And even by Saturday night, many were still without power. Some Easter weekend...

By Friday evening when I got home from work, not only was the storm over, but we had already lost most of the snow! It wasn't hot or anything, but the sun was out all day, and with the temps in the upper 30s to low 40s, there was a lot of it just lost to radiation. As you can see from the comparisson picture, what a difference there can be in really what amounts to just hours between what was going on Thursday morning to that of today! Even so, many were still without power and it wasn't that warm out.

Hundreds of line crews were out trying to get power restored, but the weight of the snow had been so great that some poles had even come down. There were areas that were almost disaster relief qualifying. It was a bad one, and I was just lucky nothing severe happened. Losing power at this time of year is nothing compared to what could happen in the dead of winter. It really makes you stop and think here in the Northeast...