Snow causes disruptions, colder weather ahead

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This article was published 10/12/2024 (281 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Residents of Southern Manitoba spent much of Monday digging themselves out of their homes and streets after a December snow squall dumped upwards of 18 centimeters of snow in both Brandon and Winnipeg.

“We did see some, you know, notable snowfall of simulations over the past 24 hours or so, with Brandon reporting 18 centimeters of snow,” Environment Canada scientist Christy Climenhaga told the Sun on Monday morning. “The Winnipeg airport also reporting 18 centimeters of snow. Just to give you an idea of all of the measurements we got, we had anywhere from, you know, 11 centimeters to that 18 centimeters reported within the Winnipeg area. So lots of variation within this system.”

Climenhaga prefaced her comments by saying that it’s difficult to make concrete statements about snow measurements because they tend to be “tricky at best,” due to several reasons.

In Manitoba’s case, she said the temperature started off fairly warm at the start of the system when it entered Manitoba, so the early snow was wetter and more compact, and thus accumulated differently than it might under cooler temperatures. As well, strong winds tend to move the snow around, making estimates more difficult.

Nevertheless, the snowfall overnight on Sunday caused significant delays for motorists attempting to get around both the city of Brandon and Westman Highways. On Sunday night, the City of Brandon issued a travel advisory within city limits, asking motorists to avoid travelling to First Street North between Kirkaldy Drive and Rosser Avenue as several vehicles had become stuck in drifting snow.

School buses outside the city were cancelled in the Brandon School Division, and several other rural school divisions in western Manitoba cancelled classes altogether due to poor road conditions.

By Monday morning, the city’s arterial roads were beginning to be cleared, with city crews working into the day to clear non-critical city streets later in the day. As noted on the city’s website, streets are cleared in a priority order, which is based on the classification and volume of traffic using each street.

“We’ll do the main arteries, and then go down from there,” said Brandon’s Acting City Manager, Terry Parlow. “So depending on where they are in the city, they’ll get to everybody’s streets eventually, but it just takes some time.”

Parlow also made a request to those residents who tend to park their vehicles on city streets overnight, asking them to ensure they move off the street when crews are coming around, and recognize when clean-up is taking place.

“That would probably be the most beneficial thing that everybody can do to work together.”

Brandon’s snow clearing budget for 2024 is $924,000, and Parlow said the city is still currently under budget for the year. But with a few weeks still left in the year, that can change in a hurry.

“Obviously a snowfall of this nature is going to tap into that quite a bit,” Parlow added. “Right now we are under budget, but failing a few more of these, we might be in a different situation.”

While the snowfall may be done, Climenhaga said Manitobans will want to brace themselves for a drop in temperatures this week as a new mass of cold air follows the previous system out. Tonight’s temperatures are going to dip into to the -25 C range in western Manitoba, with lows of -30 C likely for Wednesday night.

“Again, it really depends on that cloud cover and that temperature with the wind chill,” Climenhaga pointed out. “You could be feeling colder than that.”

The sudden cold snap is forecast to end on Saturday with highs of -10 C and a low on Saturday night of -12 C.

» mgoerzen@brandonsun.com

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