Montreal snow storm

[Angelo]

Montreal travellers stranded by winter blast
Updated Mon. Mar. 10 2008 11:41 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Travellers in Montreal trying to escape the city's bleak winter weather are stuck in the airport, after a massive weekend storm cancelled hundreds of flights.

A group of high school students heading to Paris missed a full day of their trip because of delays.

"I feel bad for the students because they worked hard for two years to pay for this trip," said their teacher, Lucille Vachon, as they waited in Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

"This is their trip. They did the fundraising and they had jobs."

Robert Kartes, another stranded traveller, said he had his hands full trying to stave off boredom for his group.

"With five children between two families, looks like we're going to try some games and maybe a scavenger hunt," he said.


Outside of the airport, the city's snow removal crews are still trying to dig their way out of the snowy deluge.

Yves Girard, Montreal's snow removal director, told Canada AM on Monday poorly parked cars are hampering crews's efforts.

"They park at angles, so that makes difficulties for the equipment to pass on streets," Girard said. "We are asking the population to restrict the parking restrictions for the operations."

About 3,000 employees and 2,200 pieces of equipment are involved in the snow removal effort in Montreal, he said.

The city has 38 snow removal sites, but this year's long, snowy winter has left those filled, he said. Five new ones have been opened.

"For my career of 30 years in Montreal, I haven't seen so much snow," Girard said.

Environment Canada said all of Quebec received between 25 to 35 centimetres of snow, but high winds in some areas created huge drifts.

City officials in Ottawa suggested it could take until the end of the week to complete snow removal operations after an estimated 51 centimetres fell there.

Richard Hewitt, Ottawa's deputy city mayor manager, said the operation could cost millions of dollars.

"We've received one heck of a lot of snow this year and a lot of it has been quite recent -- certainly since January 1," he said. "In that vein, we expect that we're going to be well over our budget expectations."

Toronto got snowfalls of between 15 and 30 centimetres, with up to 40 cm in some outlying suburbs.

The city said most street clearing was wrapped up by Sunday night, with snow removal starting on Monday. However, bad parking held up streetcars on some inner city streets.

Cars that were parked too close to the city's streetcar tracks are being towed away at the expense of the driver.

Officials estimate the bill for digging out from this storm will top $5 million, CTV Toronto reported.

Toronto officials say the city has spent $45 million of its $67 million budgeted for snow removal this budget year, which ends in December, and may add another $12 million to the budget.

Girard suspects that Montreal has consumed more than the 60 per cent of its $127-million snow removal budget that it usually spends by this time.

Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City are all about one powerful snowstorm away from setting new records for most snowfall in a winter.

Ottawa has about 411 centimetres so far, with a record of 444 set in 1970-1971. Toronto has about 190 centimetres of snow so far, with the record of 207 cm set in 1938-39.

Snow-related death

People in Campbellton, N.B. are mourning a young boy's snow-related death.

RCMP say the eight-year-old died Saturday when a snow tunnel in which he was playing collapsed, apparently suffocating him.

CTV Atlantic's Kellen Sundahl said Monday that relatives performed CPR on the boy, who wasn't breathing.

The boy was taken to a local hospital by ambulance, but doctors pronounced him dead, she said.

An autopsy was expected to be performed Monday.

Northern New Brunswick, where Campbellton is located, got about 50 centimetres of snow over the weekend as part of the storm.

In the Saint John area of southern New Brunswick, nearly 80 millimetres of rain caused some weekend street and basement flooding, but officials there say things are essentially back to normal.

Freezing rain on the weekend had people in Fredericton chipping instead of pumping or shovelling.

With reports from CTV Toronto's Naomi Parness, CTV Montreal's Derek Conlon and Maya Johnson, and CTV Atlantic's Kellen Sundahl


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[Angelo]

Its hell down here, i havent seen so much snow in my life,another storm is coming wednesday:mpa:

[Angelo]

Canadians nearing record-breaking winter for snow
Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:22pm EDT Print This Article | Single Page[-] Text [+]
1 of 1Full SizeBy Jonathan Spicer and Randall Palmer

TORONTO/OTTAWA (Reuters) - Eastern Canada closed in on record snowfall levels this weekend, after a late-season storm dumped up to half a meter (20 inches) of snow on a region that has already been battered by a series of winter storms.

Toronto was among the first hit late on Friday as the storm pushed up from the U.S. Midwest. By Sunday, about 30 cm (12 inches) of snow had accumulated, leading to hundreds of traffic accidents, scores of flight cancellations and buried any expectations of spring.

It also left the country's biggest city only about 21 cm (8 inches) shy of its 69-year-old annual snowfall record.

"People are demanding a recount, they want to break the record," said David Phillips, Environment Canada's chief climatologist.

"It was a monster storm where you had the lake-effect component, the winds were wild, and there were two waves of it," he said in an interview.

Montreal took on about 42 cm (16 inches) of snow over the weekend, leaving it about 23 cm shy of its record, set in the winter of 1970-71.

But Ottawa felt the most pain: The nation's capital just about completely shut down after more than 50 cm (20 inches) of snow fell, canceling flights, trains, buses and many activities.

About 407 cm (13.4 feet) of snow has fallen in the city so far this year, which approaches its seemingly invincible record of 445 cm, also set in 1970-71. Continued...

Nearing the record has produced a sharp though good-natured divide between those winter-weary souls who say enough already, and those who want to have something to tell their grandchildren.

"Bring it on! Be brave," said Marc Moreau, smoking outside an Ottawa office building in a group where snow was the only topic of conversation.

"Second is good enough for me," disagreed his friend John Carmichael, hoping, probably in vain, that this past weekend will have seen the last snowfall.

Even if Ottawa's plows were out 24 hours a day, there was nowhere to put the white stuff in some cases. Some major streets were reduced by a lane in each direction -- even on Monday morning, a day after the storm had stopped -- because of huge snowbanks.

With snow easily piled up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) fire officials were warning residents to keep their furnace vents clear to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning.

The city is bracing for more snow on Thursday and several days of snow in the second half of March.

"Ottawa is really just three Alberta Clippers or one Colorado Hooker away from getting the big record," Phillips said, referring to common winter storms in central and eastern parts of Canada and the United States.

The climatologist noted that although Canada has seen a lot of precipitation this winter, it is still slightly warmer than average. This is because the storms have originated from down in the United States, not the much colder and dryer Arctic regions, Phillips said.

Meanwhile, on Canada's west coast, Spring flowers have been in bloom for weeks. The temperature in Vancouver was 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) over the weekend, and much the same was expected on Monday.

(Additional reporting by Nicole Mordant in Vancouver; editing by Rob


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[Napalm]

We got hit by the same storms here in Toronto too. Its impossible to go to the Greektown since it only has street parking and the leftist mayor cuts back on road plowing to pay for all those social programs for Jamacan drug dealers.
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[Ellinas]

We faced heavy snowstorms here in Athens 2 weeks ago, it's your turn now
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[Prokomenos]

I heard it was chaos in Canada. Luckily for once I have seen no snow here in NY and its safe to assume their wont be any either lol...

[Napalm]

Even though Montreal gets worse weather than Toronto at least your drivers are better and are way more likely to have things like snow tires. We have too many amateur FOB newbie drivers here in Toronto. The worst is when you are visiting southern US cities that don't get regular snow. The rare time it snows or gets freezing rain its total suicide You see all these people driving with bald summer tires twirling along the highways like a demolition derby.

[Female]

And we had a storm here in Holland....lucky us no snow just wind