Central Maine Power crews were out early again this morning, working to restore power to the 10,849 York County customers still without electricity at 8:30 a.m.

The utility has made significant progress in restoring electricity throughout its service area. At the peak of the pre-Thanksgiving day storm, there were more than 100,000 CMP customers in the dark. By 8:30 a.m. today, that figure had dropped to 27,454 across the utility’s service area.

At 8 a.m., Old Orchard Beach had 1,047 outages; by 8:30 a.m. the number dropped to 317.

West of the turnpike, 1,300 of Alfred’s 1,500 CMP customers were in the dark Wednesday night and part of Thursday, and by this morning there were just 22 without electric power.

In a prepared statement issued Thursday evening, CMP spokeswoman Gail Rice said if the weather holds, she expects 90 percent of customers will be reconnected by this evening.

“We will still have scattered outages on Saturday affecting small groups of customers, especially on seasonal roads, peninsulas, islands, and other hard-to-reach locations,” Rice said.

At Five Points Shopping Center in Biddeford this morning, line crews paused for breakfast and coffee before heading out to continue restorations.

One fellow, who works with line crews, said the restoration is going “okay.” He, like many other CMP workers, didn’t have Thanksgiving at home ”“ he worked from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., went home to his wife, who is expecting their first child, and was back out again at 5 a.m. today. The couple, who live in Scarborough, didn’t have electricity at home either, but they did have a generator.

“We live in Maine, these things happen,” he said.

The CMP worker said his crew was down in the Sanford area on Thanksgiving day and people were nice, thanking the workers for their efforts and expressing their appreciation.

The storm, which began before noon Wednesday, dumped a foot of snow inland and six to eight inches along the York County coast. Driving conditions deteriorated quickly Wendesday producing numerous slide-offs and crashes. From noon to 8 p.m. Wednesday, York County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to 76 motor vehicle crashes, said Chief Deputy Bill King. He said a few of the crashes resulted in minor injuries.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford) or 282-1535, ext. 327 or twells@journaltribune.com.