Heavy Snow — Northern Oxford, Maine

2021-04-16 · Northern Oxford, Maine

Event narrative

Snow moved into the area during the early morning hours on the 16th and continued into the evening. The majority of the snowfall accumulated through the afternoon hours as a mesoscale snowband with moderate snowfall rates moved into the Western Maine Mountains. Due to the late season snowfall occurring during daylight hours, the snowfall struggled to accumulate in elevations below 800ft. This led to a highly elevation dependent snowfall event with only a slushy inch across the lower elevation river valley floors and up to 8 in the mountains. The heavy wet snow led to isolated power outages due to weighed down tree limbs.

Wider weather episode

A slow moving low pressure system moved across southern New England late Thursday night through Friday before entering into the Gulf of Maine by Saturday. Rain and snow started first across the Western Maine Mountains early Friday morning on the 16th before quickly changed over to all snow across higher elevations above 1000ft. The snow became moderate at times by midday Friday as banding developed on the northwest side of the deepening surface low. Snow began to taper off and become showery in nature as the system filled and weakened as it pulled further off shore. Key Impacts: transportation delays, heavy wet snow leading to minor power outages.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 956062. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.