Storm disrupts travel, business, electricity
Published Tuesday December 23rd, 2008
HALIFAX - Snow, freezing rain and winds that reached hurricane strength in places caused travel delays and knocked out power to parts of the Maritime provinces on Monday.
The region was the latest area of the country to be hit by a wintry blast that left thousands in the dark and forced cancellation of several flights.
At one point, roughly 30,000 homes and businesses were without electricity in Nova Scotia, 11,000 of them in the Halifax area.
"It's a widespread and severe winter storm and it's not over yet, with these high winds expected to continue for some time," said Margaret Murphy, a spokeswoman for Nova Scotia Power.
"We regret that our customers are waking up to no power, but we are asking for patience as our crews work to restore it."
The Yarmouth, N.S., area reported winds of hurricane force, while several other parts of the province experienced gusts up to 100 kilometres an hour.
"The high winds are a big factor for our crews. They have to drop down in order for our crews to put bucket trucks in the air and do the work safely," said Murphy.
NB Power crews were trying to restore electricity to about 9,000 customers, with the biggest outages in the Fredericton and Woodstock areas, but virtually all of them had their power restored by late Monday.
NB Power spokeswoman Heather MacLean said the past few days have been hectic for repair crews.
"With three storms last week and now this, we're definitely busy," she said.
NB Power will send seven work crews to help restore power in Nova Scotia, beginning today.
MacLean said the crews - made up of 17 workers and three supervisors - are prepared to work right through the holidays.
"Our crews are very committed to restoring power, and they understand how important it is for customers to have they're power back, so they're committed to stay through Christmas to assist Nova Scotia," she said in an interview from Fredericton.
In Halifax, pedestrians fought winds on their way to work that were strong enough to stop some in their tracks.
"I could hardly walk up the hill," one woman said after she struggled up the steep hill that the city's downtown is built on. "I haven't been having a good morning."
Most businesses and offices across P.E.I. delayed opening Monday or simply shut down for the day, and hundreds of Islanders woke up to power blackouts.
Most of the outages were in southern Kings County where the highest winds were recorded shortly after midnight.
Travel restrictions were in place on the Confederation Bridge and the Trans-Canada Highway was closed for part of the morning from Amherst, N.S., to the New Brunswick border because of reduced visibility. By noon, only empty transport trucks were being kept off the highway because of the wind.
New Brunswick's Transportation Department also shut down ferry service in Gagetown, Evandale and Deer Island and the RCMP urged extreme caution on all highways as the wind whipped the snow around, creating icy conditions.
The arrivals and departures board at Halifax airport was awash in red and yellow early Monday with flight cancellations and delays.
The Fredericton airport, which was reporting at least 30 centimetres of snow on the ground, announced that all flights would be cancelled until at least noon.
Storm surge warnings were issued for coastal areas of northern Nova Scotia and P.E.I., because of the danger of higher than normal tides and pounding surf.
Meanwhile, winter debuted Sunday with boisterous displays of heavy snow, powerful winds and numbing cold across the country.
Forecasters are predicting Christmas will look much the same, with Canada on track to have its first coast-to-coast white Christmas since 1971.
"I would dare say if you're in a satellite looking down on Canada, it would be white from coast to coast to coast and it would be frozen," said David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.
"There's no area that can say that winter hasn't really arrived."
Red warning labels stretched right across the government agency's weather map, showing snowfall warnings and arctic outflow in British Columbia and flesh-freezing windchill warnings for the Prairies and northern Ontario.
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