Halifax Harbour on Sunday. Meteorologists warn the difficult weather could continue until at least Tuesday.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
Heavy snow, extreme cold and gusty winds made for tricky commutes across much of Atlantic Canada on Monday morning, with meteorologists warning the difficult weather would continue for at least another day.
One week after Atlantic Canada was hit with the first major snowstorm of the season, another haul of snow pummelled the region overnight Sunday and through Monday. Environment Canada put all of Nova Scotia under a yellow snowfall warning, saying the snow was expected to continue into Tuesday morning, with up to 35 centimetres possible in parts of the province.
“We had one really good shot of snow overnight,” Ian Hubbard, meteorologist with Environment Canada, said Monday. “But we are expecting more snow later today to pick up again.”
“It’s certainly not over. We are expecting this to be an all-day event.”
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Winds gusting up to 70 kilometres an hour were creating blowing snow and tricky travel conditions. Outside in downtown Halifax on Monday afternoon, Thomas MacDonald said he was having a hard time getting around the city because of the flurries and blowing snow, adding that the dump of snowfall overnight was “a bit too much.”
“But you know, we’ve got to get through it. I take the bus – and they’re on the snow plan,” he said, referring to the city’s reduced bus schedule.
Yellow weather warnings are issued when Environment Canada believes conditions may cause short-term or moderate damage or disruption. Orange warnings – like those in parts of Labrador on Monday where extreme cold could make it feel like -46 C – are issued when weather is likely to cause significant damage and widespread disruption.
Temperatures in other parts of the Atlantic region warmed slightly from the weekend, leading several power utilities to lift their warnings of extra pressure on the power grid.
Over the weekend, Nova Scotia’s private power utility asked customers to conserve energy by turning off “high-consumption appliances” like ovens and clothes dryers and choosing “the lowest comfortable thermostat setting.”
Customers were less than impressed with the utility’s requests, with Halifax resident Megan Balcom calling them “insulting”
“A lot of us are already reducing what we can just to afford bills,” Balcom said in an e-mail to The Canadian Press, referring to a post on the Nova Scotia Power Instagram account.
“Rates keep increasing but service and quality seem to decrease.”
Earlier this year, the utility had asked the province’s energy regulator to raise residential rates, a move that’s been denounced by members of all three provincial political parties. The province’s largest power utility had proposed residential rate increases of about eight per cent by next year.
“How about investing that eight per cent increase into supporting the grid instead of returning profits to shareholders?” wrote one commenter on social media.
In an e-mail Sunday, Nova Scotia Power officials said they have “read all messages from our customers and certainly understand their frustration.” With temperatures up from the -30 C wind chill values seen over the weekend, the utility lifted the request on Monday for customers to conserve energy.
“While there were some localized issues and outages related to the cold on Sunday, our teams were able to avoid system-wide issues that could have required load shedding – or pro-active, short rotating outages across the province,” the utility said in a news release.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, residents spent a frigid weekend under the threat of rolling power outages. The province’s hydro utility called off those warnings Monday morning, after crews managed to get six of seven generating units working at the utility’s Bay d’Espoir power station.
The hydroelectric station was down over the weekend because frazil ice – a slushy type of ice that can form in turbid waters – jammed the plant’s intake pipes. Officials said it was the first time the 604-megawatt power plant in southern Newfoundland had been shut down since it came into service in 1967.
Heavy snow and extreme cold have wreaked havoc across the country.
Schools across the Greater Toronto Area were closed and hundreds of flights cancelled following a record-breaking winter storm that left 46 centimetres of snow in its wake on Sunday, making this the snowiest month for the city since records began in 1937.
The Toronto Transit Commission reported major problems on multiple transit routes Monday morning, and Ontario Provincial Police said they responded to approximately 200 collisions and another 150 calls for vehicles stuck in ditches in the greater Toronto and Hamilton areas over a 24-hour period.
In Montreal, a few thousand customers remained without power Monday after broken equipment at a substation triggered a major power outage in the city’s southwest. The power was out during a cold snap, with wind chill values hovering around -26 C.
Temperatures remained frigid over the prairies, with wind chill values in parts of the province around -33 C, with a risk of frostbite.
Areas of southern New Brunswick, including the cities of Saint John and Moncton, could see up to 30 cm of snow by Tuesday morning, while Prince Edward Island can expect upwards of 20 cm.
“I recommend people check the forecast for their area if they have to be anywhere …. The storm is certainly not over,” said Hubbard. “If anyone’s jumping the gun that we’re out of this yet, I assure you we’re not.”