A powerful late-season snowstorm knocked out electrical service to the entire town of Harpswell on Thursday, April 4, in the town’s sixth major weather-related outage since mid-December.

According to Central Maine Power, all 4,761 of its residential and commercial customers in Harpswell were without power as of 3 p.m. More than 103,000 of the utility’s 177,000 customers in Cumberland County were without power, as were about 315,000 of its more than 675,600 customers statewide.

“Heavy wet snow and strong winds will continue through the day, creating hazardous road and work conditions across our service area,” CMP said in a statement issued Thursday at 9:30 a.m. “Please use caution if you travel today. We have deployed more than 450 additional line crews and 250 tree crews to assist with our restoration efforts.”

The utility issued an update at 1:30 p.m. indicating that it could be days before some communities have their power restored.

“The storm has created near-blizzard conditions, and road and work conditions across our service area continue to be hazardous,” CMP said. “Given the scale of damage we are seeing, at this time we do anticipate this to be a multiple-day restoration effort, lasting into early next week for some customers in hardest-hit areas.”

Power outage tracking website PowerOutage.us was reporting that neighboring New Hampshire also had nearly 175,000 power outages as of 3 p.m.

Michael Drake, Harpswell’s fire administrator and emergency management director, said crews from the town’s three volunteer fire departments had responded to six calls related to power lines as of 11:30 a.m., in addition to clearing eight downed trees that had been blocking roads.

There was one fire call for an odor in a house, but no hazard was found, Drake said via email. The Orr’s & Bailey Islands Fire Department had one medical call, and the patient was transported to Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick. The ambulance was escorted to the call by R.A. Webber & Sons plow trucks due to the heavy snow.

He warned residents not to run generators less than 10 feet from a house or inside a garage during the outage.

An emergency operations center was established at the Orr’s & Bailey Islands fire station at 3 a.m. Thursday and would continue until roughly 4 p.m., Drake said, when strong coastal winds of up to 55 miles per hour were expected to subside.

According to the National Weather Service office in Gray, a winter storm warning for heavy snow and sleet was in effect for portions of south central and southwest Maine, including Harpswell, until 8 p.m. Thursday. It was forecasting total snowfall of 9 to 21 inches and sleet accumulations around one-tenth of an inch.

On Wednesday, Gov. Janet Mills warned that much of the state was likely to lose power Thursday.

“I urge Maine people to take proper precautions and to prepare for possible power outages,” Mills said in a statement. “We recommend that you stay off the roads if you can, but if you must travel during the storm, be sure to give plow trucks, utility crews, and emergency first responders plenty of room as they work to keep us safe.”

Harpswell and other parts of Maine have experienced multiple major storm-related power outages over the past few months, including on Dec. 18, Jan. 10, Jan. 13, March 10 and March 24.

In a few cases, Harpswell was among the first to lose power and the last to have it restored. Nearly half the town’s power customers still were without power two days after a March 24 ice storm.

Have a comment or news tip? Email J. Craig Anderson at craig@harpswellanchor.org.