Winter Storm — Interior Cumberland Highlands, Maine

2022-12-16 to 2022-12-17 · Interior Cumberland Highlands, Maine

Event narrative

Light precipitation began on the morning on the 16th. Steady moderate to occasionally heavy snow started relatively quickly after the onset, especially at higher elevations. Southeast flow upsloping into the western Maine Mountains produced significantly more snowfall along the east facing slopes. Precipitation tapered off midday on the 17th. Snowfall totals ranged from 6 inches near Sebago Lake to 18 inches near Pleasant Mountain.

Wider weather episode

On December 16th low pressure develop near Chesapeake Bay and slowly moved northeastward along the coast to a position near Nantucket late in the day. Eventually low pressure moved into the Gulf of Maine on December 17th and continued towards Nova Scotia. Despite a climatologically favorable track for significant snowfall, the antecedent near surface air mass was marginal for snow south of the mountains. Temperatures aloft were cool and supportive of snow, but rain mixed in south of the foothills. Due to the heavy wet snow, significant power outages occurred across interior Maine with 80,000 outages reported. Oxford, Franklin and Somerset Counties were impacted the hardest. There was a significant upslope and elevation component to snowfall totals when precipitation finally came to an end on the 17th.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1065450. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.