Amelia Austin, 11, of Turner, and her father, Mike Austin, run through the snow on Thursday during the 7th Annual Turkey Trot 4 Hope in Norway. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

Just as Mainers were sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner, a November storm served up a taste of winter weather that left much of the state covered by a dusting – or more – of snow.

Thursday morning was mostly gray and wet as the storm rolled in from New Hampshire. But as forecasters predicted, rain steadily gave way to snow as the afternoon wore on, and by 6 p.m. most regions were seeing at least some snowfall, according to Michael Ekster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Gray.

“It’s snowing at least lightly pretty much everywhere except the immediate coast,” Ekster said. He said the hills of Oxford County have seen the heaviest snowfalls (up to a reported 8 inches in Sweden), but as of Thursday evening the weather service had received a dearth of reports from the volunteer observers it relies on to collect data.

“Everybody’s eating Thanksgiving dinner right now, so we’re not getting too many reports, to tell you the truth,” Ekster said. “We’ll have a whole slew of reports by 5 or 6 a.m.”

Power outages ticked up steadily throughout the afternoon, from fewer than 100 households across the state without power at 2:30 to nearly 17,000 at 7 p.m., according to Central Maine Power’s and Versant’s websites. Oxford and Somerset counties saw the bulk of those outages, while the coastal counties remained mostly untouched. Forecasters had warned that the combination of Thursday evening’s wet, heavy snow and the gusty winds expected to pick up later in the night could be a recipe for downed power lines.

But though power outages threatened to sabotage Thanksgiving dinners and football viewing parties, forecasters and police pointed out a silver lining to the holiday storm: Few drivers were on the road to experience the potentially dangerous conditions.

Skowhegan Police Chief David Bucknam said that traffic was light-to-medium at 6 p.m., as some residents drove home from family celebrations. He said he hoped that once people made it home, they would stay off the slick roads until the city could get the roads plowed and salted for the morning commute.

Most years, snow isn’t a factor for the holiday, but it hasn’t been that long since there was a snowy Thanksgiving in southern Maine.

Thanksgiving 2018 felt and looked like the dead of winter in Portland. It didn’t snow that day, but there were several inches on the ground, and the temperature hovered around 6 degrees, making it the coldest Thanksgiving on record for the city.

Dustin Wlodkowski, a spokesperson for Central Maine Power, said the company had been tracking the storm since the beginning of the week.

“Our line, tree and operations teams are receiving regular updates from our meteorologists and will be on standby throughout the day tomorrow to respond to any outages that may occur,” he said Wednesday.

The weather service has issued a winter storm watch for parts of Somerset, York, Cumberland, Androscoggin and Kennebec counties that will be in effect through Friday morning.

Officials at the Portland International Jetport have been keeping an eye on the weather in Maine and across the country during the busiest travel week of the year. The wintery weather in Maine may not cause major travel delays, but officials have been reminding travelers to check their flight status before heading to the airport.