?
Paul Daly/THE CANADIAN PRESS Residents in downtown St. John?s, N.L. dig out after a powerful snow storm last month. The city now faces another storm, with 20 cm of snow expected.
Photograph by: PAUL DALY , THE CANADIAN PRESS
ST. JOHN?S, N.L. ? A winter storm that hammered the Maritimes was swirling east across Newfoundland on Sunday bringing high winds and heaps of snow.
Environment Canada meteorologist Jeremy March said central Newfoundland has already been hit with 33 centimetres of snow, and can expect up to another 20 cm as snow continues to blow in.
St. John?s is digging out from 23 cm of snow that fell Sunday morning, and March said the area is forecast to get more snow and freezing rain as the storm pushes through.
Wind gusts of more than 100 kilometres an hour were expected to pummel the country?s easternmost province after ripping through parts of the Maritimes Saturday.
March said Nova Scotia got some of the worst winds, with many places seeing winds upwards of 140 km/h. A spot just east of Yarmouth in the province?s west was hit by extreme gusts that reached 164 km/h, which is category 2 hurricane wind, March noted.
The system is a hybrid of a storm that dumped 20 to 40 cm of snow in southern Ontario on Friday and a low pressure system that raged up the U.S. eastern seaboard, March said.
?The two in combination became a really intense low (system) just off the coast of Massachusetts ... that did a lot of damage across the New England states. Eventually it pushed a ton of snow and wind across the Maritimes and now it?s in Newfoundland,? he said.
Two weather systems joining forces does not generally happen throughout the year, but is far from rare in the winter, March said.
Several flights were cancelled at St. John?s International Airport while Marine Atlantic has suspended ferry service between North Sydney, Nova Scotia, and Port aux Basques, N.L.
About a dozen flights were called off at Halifax International Airport, while trips arriving at Toronto?s Pearson International Airport to St. John?s, Halifax and Moncton, N.B., on Sunday morning were scuttled.
In the U.S. about 310,000 homes and business remained without power Sunday as the Northeast dug out from a blizzard that dumped up to a metre of snow on the most densely populated part of the region. The death toll was at 11.
Some motorists had to be rescued after spending hours stuck in wet, heavy snow. Utilities in some hard-hit New England states predicted that the storm could leave some customers in the dark at least until Tuesday. About 650,000 lost power in eight states at the height of the storm.
?We?ve never seen anything like this,? said county official Steven Bellone of New York?s Long Island, where hundreds of drivers had been caught on highways by Friday?s fast-moving storm. Local police said Sunday that all known abandoned cars were searched and no one needing medical help was found.
At least 11 deaths in the U.S. were blamed on the snowstorm, including an 11-year-old boy in Boston who was overcome by carbon monoxide as he sat in a running car to keep warm while his father shovelled Saturday morning. Four deaths were reported in Canada.
Roads were impassable, and cars were entombed by snow drifts. Some people couldn?t open the doors of their homes.
?It?s like lifting cement,? said Michael Levesque, who was shovelling snow in Massachusetts.Blowing with hurricane-force winds, the storm hit hard along the heavily populated corridor between New York City and Maine.
New York City?s three major airports ? LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark, New Jersey ? were up and running by late Saturday morning after shutting down the evening before. Boston?s Logan Airport resumed operations late Saturday night.
Most of the power outages were in Massachusetts.
The Newfoundland blizzard should be the last gasp for the hybrid storm, March says.
Nova Scotia Power said more than 20,000 customers were without electricity at one point on Saturday, but by early Sunday morning all but a handful had been re-connected.
In southern Ontario, the weekend of clear skies that followed Friday?s snow day is expected to be replaced by a new system bringing warmer temperatures and rain ? potentially freezing rain in some central areas ? later Sunday.
It should then bring a ?mixed bag? of precipitation into the province?s east on Monday, March said.
?In the middle of winter you can expect anything,? he said.
Temperatures ranging up to 5 C may help melt the snow, but memories of Ontario?s wintry blast ? in many places the biggest single dump of snow in several years ? will linger.
The massive storm left two people dead from vehicle collisions, while an 80-year-old Hamilton woman died while shovelling her driveway.
In Toronto, which saw roughly 30 cm of snow, there was chaos at Pearson airport with numerous flight disruptions.
Perhaps the most eyebrow raising case occurred with a Sunwing Vacation plane full of vacationers bound for Panama and Costa Rica.
It ended up sitting on the runway at Pearson International Airport for more than 12 hours Friday, grounded by delays linked to the weather. After spending a few more hours waiting in a terminal the passengers finally departed late Friday.
Sunwing spokesman Daryl McWilliams said Sunday that under the circumstances, it?s not surprising the airport ?wasn?t working normally? during the storm.
?But you couldn?t blame the airport for that ... it was a chaotic situation,? he said.
McWilliams said the passengers have been understanding, noting the airline gave them travel vouchers to make up for the unusually long wait.
A Pearson spokeswoman said part of the reason for the delay was a computer glitch that disrupted de-icing operations at the airport.
- with files from The Associated Press
? Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
?
?
?
?
?
?
Source: http://feeds.canada.com/~r/canwest/F229/~3/bszmWM7zwHg/story.html
Cabin Fever 2 Alexis Wright Zumba binder full of women Microsoft Surface Candy Crowley binders of women Alexis Wright
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.