Icy conditions Sunday morning resulted in dozens of vehicles sliding off the roads in Kennebec and Somerset counties and along Interstate 95 from Augusta to Pittsfield, but there didn’t appear to be any serious accidents caused by the black ice.
The National Weather Service in Gray issued a hazardous weather outlook early Sunday morning for parts of Maine as freezing rain fell and ice accumulated on travel lanes.
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Roads improved by late morning as temperatures rose about freezing and reports of vehicles sliding off the pavement decreased.
A dispatcher for the Maine State Police in Augusta said there weren’t any additional reports of vehicles sliding off the road after around 11 a.m. There also hadn’t been any reports of serious accidents, the dispatcher said.
Dispatchers at the Waterville Police Department and at the Somerset County Regional Communications Center in Skowhegan said there were accidents, but with no serious injuries. In all, about 50 reports of car accident were received through the Somerset dispatch center from about 4:30 a.m. until temperatures began to rise after 11 a.m.
A dispatcher for the city of Augusta said around 10 a.m. that there were still around a dozen accidents waiting for a response.
Between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m., there were 25 reports of accidents or disabled vehicles in Augusta, the majority before 9 a.m., according to the police log.
In the Manchester and Winthrop area, there were reports of vehicles off the road all over, said a dispatcher for the town of Winthrop.
“There was black ice and just chaos,” she said.
In southern Maine, a fatal accident caused by icy conditions shut down U.S. Route 1 on the Biddeford/Arundel line Sunday morning.
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