As a wet snowfall continued to make roads slick and caused numerous accidents in southern Maine, Gov. Paul LePage ordered state offices – except in Aroostook County – closed at 3 p.m. to allow state employees time to travel home in daylight.

“The roads are very bad,” said Lt. Jim Sweatt of the Portland Police Department. “We’re having a tough time getting around ourselves.”

Some motorists were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, although no serious injuries were reported as of late Friday morning, he said.

“We have accidents everywhere right now,” said Sherri O’Leary, a Maine State Police dispatcher in Gray. “We have accidents on the turnpike, on the interstate…. We’re taking one call right after another.”

The most serious accident was in York, where a man was critically injured when his pickup truck overturned on the turnpike.

In another turnpike accident, a state police cruiser was struck in Portland when another car slid into the rear of the cruiser while the trooper was out of the car investigating a crash. Nobody was injured.

Extra officers are on duty to respond to the accidents, O’Leary said, and the speed limit was reduced to 45 mph on the turnpike.

Meanwhile, Central Maine Power Co. said it was ready to respond to outages as the snow piles up on tree limbs. There were already scattered reports of downed power lines and outages.

“We’ve put our storm response plan into motion, and we’re watching the forecast closely,” John Carroll, spokesman for Central Maine Power, said in a written statement. “Our main concern will be the moisture content of the snow, especially in parts of interior Maine. Wet snow sticks to trees and limbs, and the weight can bring them down on our lines.”

The National Weather Service is forecasting snow or rain throughout the day in southern Maine. Snow accumulations are expected to total between 4 and 6 inches along the coast and as much as 8 inches inland.

CMP urged people to stay away from downed lines and report outages to its toll-free hotline: 1-800-696-1000.